I've heard several people in the last few weeks state that "they" say it's going to be a rough winter. I'm not sure who "they" are, but I sincerely hope that they're wrong. I see on Accuweather that the local forecast shows 3 days with bits of snow here and there in the next couple of weeks. That's earlier than we usually have snow, but I'm still holding out hope that it will be a fairly mild winter.
I don't mind a little snow here and there, so long as it doesn't build up in big drifts or cover the roads, partially melt, then refreeze and make it slippery all over. We live on a hill that doesn't get plowed, so icy roads really stink.
We've only had one very snowy winter since moving here in early 2006, and that was the roughest one seen around here in some time. People kept saying "It's never like this!" They also said that during the previous summer, when we had a number of weeks of temps in the 90s. We didn't believe them at the time, but after having lived here for 4 1/2 years, we've seen for ourselves that it was true. Summers get warm, and sometimes unpleasantly so when most people around here don't have a/c in their homes, but they're generally not too bad. And winters get cold and we get lots of rain and the occasional snow, but not usually enough to be a nuisance.
The first winter, though, we had enough snow happen that Rachel and I stayed home for 3 solid days because I was afraid of driving on the icy roads, and on the third evening, I told James we were going out to dinner or I was going to lose my mind. That was also the year that we had a major windstorm (I think it was 70 mph) that knocked down power lines and caused transformer problems over the entire western half of Washington. There were some areas that never lost power or only lost it for a few minutes, but many more areas that were severely affected.
We lost power for 3 1/2 days, despite being in a city of 85,000 people and situated between Tacoma and Seattle. It just took that long for them to get to everyone and get things fixed. After hunkering down for a day and a half and using up our firewood only to wake up to a temperature of 55 degrees in the house, we hightailed it out of here and went to stay with James' parents, who live about an hour away. We were there for 2 nights, then came back because we wanted to make sure our cats were okay. Shortly after getting back to town, we went to Home Depot to pick up a few things, and while there, we got a phone call from our security company letting us know that they were getting an alarm from our system. We thought "Hey, if they're getting an alarm from the house, that must mean the power is restored!" Sure enough, we drove back and could already see lights on in certain parts of the house - and it's hard to find many sights that have been more beautiful to us than that!
The next winter had a decent amount of snow, too - enough to cause church services to be cancelled the Sunday before Christmas because they didn't want people to take risks trying to get to church with, again, icy roads. But it is pretty unusual for things to be that bad.
So I'm holding out hope that the winter will just be a normal one, with cooler temperatures that make us break out the winter coats, hats and gloves, some nice snowfalls to watch out the window, and rains that come along to wash the snow away before it becomes problematic. Is that too much to ask?
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