decidedlyodd

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you probably know by now that it’s been snowing a lot (by Seattle standards) here. The view from my window,

It started to snow pretty hard right around 5pm last night. There was also a home Seahawks game last night. Snow and a game on top of an already bad traffic situation probably made for one of the worst traffic nights of the year. Both I-405 north and I-5 south were completely closed at various times because of accidents and road conditions.

I ended up leaving work around 8pm to go have dinner with Jeremy and his friends in downtown Bellevue. Originally, I was supposed to have dinner with Sasa at around 6pm, but the roads were way too dangerous at that time. I actually pulled my car out of the parking garage, but when I saw people sliding around I pulled back into the garage and ended up waiting until later to leave.

It was a strange experience driving on 520 with very little traffic and still going about 35mph. At that point it had stopped snowing and a lot of the snow had even begun to melt. Unfortunately, by the time we left the restaurant around 10pm, the melted slush had already refrozen as the temperature dropped. My trip back to Seattle went fine, although everybody was driving more slowly and cautiously than usual. Jeremy’s friends were staying in a hotel near the airport and got stuck in stopped traffic around one of the points where I-5 was closed for a really long time.

All sorts of things (like schools) are shut down right now and a lot of people are staying home from work because the roads are so icy. Jeremy and I are planning to go have lunch with a friend up in the U-district this afternoon, but we’ll be leaving my car here and taking the bus instead.