A White Christmas

Walter and I spent Christmas Day in Lacey with my Mom followed by a visit to my friend Sue who lives in West Olympia. Turns out that was a great place to enjoy the Christmas SNOW that fell on Western Washington. It's rare for it to snow here on Christmas Day. I read the last time it happened was in 1996.

The snow started coming down as we were driving down to Olympia. It was predicted to be "snow flurries" and nothing really sticking more than an inch, so we weren't too worried about driving in it. When snow first starts to fall it doesn't make much impact on the ground. I was pleasantly surprised to see the snow continue to fall for a couple hours after we arrived at Mom's house. Then it stopped.

I was afraid our snow dusting was over without anything really sticking, when it started back up again. Sometimes it was light and sometimes it was as though someone dumped it from a bucket. By 5:30 when we left Mom's to go visit Sue it was sticking pretty good. I was surprised to find that snow was covering not only the grass but also the freeway when we set out for West Olympia. It was significant enough people were driving quite slowly. That's a good thing. When we got to Sue's neighborhood we slid around a bit, but arrived safely. There was over an inch on the streets by then.

We made it home safely to Seattle with our "White Christmas" memories in tow.

This 15 second video is an attempt to capture the snowfall through my Mom's kitchen window. It never shows up on video quite the way it appears to the naked eye. But you can see how halfway through the video the snowfall rate picks up dramatically. That's how it went - light, then suddenly heavy for a while. You can't see the temperature on that thermometer in the window but it was around 34-35 degrees Fahrenheit. Just barely cold enough to be snow instead of rain.

If you were in Western Washington did you enjoy our "White Christmas"? It didn't last long, but it was so pretty coming down.