Whiteout!!!!!

Crazy is the Forecast, All Week Long
-Jason Mraz

Seattle weather forecasters have a nearly impossible job, I realize. The mountains and the ocean and the Puget Sound and that thing called the Convergence Zone that everyone in the region talks about but no one really understands...it all makes forecasting here little more than voodoo.

So I am amazed when the things they predict actually happen. On Wednesday this week they started predicting snow for Saturday, so naturally I assumed it would be warm and sunny.

Saturday morning it was cool and overcast, but certainly not ominous. I lounged around the house with the kids and The Colleague. We decorated our non-denominational plastic evergreen tree. The kids had nuggets and tots for lunch. A normal day.

And then around 1:00 I geared up, stuffed a few GU packets in my pockets, and headed out for a planned 10 miler. A few flakes blew by as I waited for the Garmin to acquire some satellites.

Off I went. At the 1/4 mile mark I checked my pace (a 9:00 goal pace today) and turned west toward Kenmore, the land of all things evil and stupid. Well, every other week, anyway.

(ed note: at what age are you too old to actively maintain a MySpace page? I'm going with 25.)

Uh oh. From the top of the hill I can usually see southwest to Lake Washington and sometimes see the high rise buildings of Seattle. Today all I saw was a wall of dark gray clouds moving FAST up the hill toward me. At the 1/2 mile mark the heavy snow started, and visibility dropped to about 5 feet. Good times. The snow held on and picked up as I ran. By mile 5 I was leaving fresh tracks on the Sammamish Trail. It was all pretty fun, actually. Then, at mile 7 I stepped in a puddle up to my ankles.

By the time you read this, the snow will probably be gone. When it started falling the aforementioned forecasters were already issuing flood warnings for tonight when the snow than has fallen gets washed away. Welcome to December in Seattle.

Here is my run plan from favoriterun.com this morning:

And here is what the GPS actually says I did:


10.75 miles @ 8:39 per mile. That brings me to 43.8 miles for the week.

Except for one little hitch I added out by UW Bothell, I actually stuck to my plan. Shocking.