It snowed. Again. The fence is buried, the van is buried, the road is buried. Everything is buried in 7-8″ of snow. Apparently there’s more on the way today. And tomorrow. And Monday. As for Tuesday, well, I’ll talk about that in a bit.

Van parked in a driveway next to a fence and surrounded by trees and shrubs. Everything is blanketed in snow. The van is just a vague hump of white and only the top of the fence shows. It's a colour photo but everything is eerie shades of blue, grey, and white.

A colour photo that looks monochrome. The front garden, driveway, and road with a neighbour's house. But all you can see is snow, no road surface at all. If you didn't know it was there you would say iti was a field.

The deck off the kitchen is very sheltered but now it's smothered in snow. Still, silent. All you can see of the planters are weird shapes. The table looks like a delicious deep frosted cake. Pine tree branches seem sprayed with foam and are hanging low and heavy with snow. Again, a colour photo but it looks monochrome.

Here’s what the local supermarket looked like Thursday—early Thursday (by Friday I’m guessing even the raddiccio was gone, and possibly those working checkout eaten):

empty shelves

The bread shelves and dairy cases were empty. The only meat you could get was bison. Today, of course, no one will be going anywhere, unless employees and intrepid customers have skis and/or snow shoes. There again, it is Seattle…

We, of course, are well-stocked, with a beef and marrowbone stew bubbling on the stove, the freezer stuffed and fridge groaning. We have many bottles of wine and two full cases of beer. We have books, and a fire, and each other. And it’s so deliciously quiet and still. In some ways, I’m quite looking forward to the next week—

—or two.

Here’s a map of Seattle’s snow-clearing plan:

Map of Seattle city neighbourhoods, criss-rossed by gold lines and green lines. Gold represents all road lanes clear of snow and ice. Green means one lane in each direction clear of snow and ice. There are two conspicious chunks of map with zero lines. One, in the upper right corner, is Broadview, where we live.

Bearing in mind that Seattle has very few snow ploughs this is an extremely optimistic map. But you see that red circle around the neighbourhood with zero snow-clearing plans? That’s where we live.

We are at the bottom of a very steep hill. With overnight temperatures predicted to be around 12˚F (-11.1˚C) it will turn into a sheet of ice. There’s no ski lift or funicular; I do not have skis or treads for my wheelchair. Even if there was no more snow, I suspect I’ll be marooned for a long time. And as the mother of all snowstorms is probably heading our way on Tuesday, I’m beginning—despite our supplies—to get just a little fretful.

This morning I read Clifford Mass’s weather blog. According to European climate models (which I tend to find more accurrate than most), it’s very possible Seattle will see 10-16″ of snow:

Graph of the European climate model showing 51 variations of weather predictions. But all show a startling change from light blue (4

Given that the forecasts for Friday were for about 4″ of snow, and here in our little pocket climate we had close to 7″, I’m feeling just a tad pessimistic. But, as with my political predictions, I’m very often wrong about weather. So at the same time—I really don’t have a problem with being paradoxical—I feel bizarrely cheerful and sure it will all work out just fine.

And, hey, wine, food, fire, books, and my sweetie… There are definitely worse things.