Weather Patterns

Let me make one thing clear first...I studied human beings and biology not weather....but 9 times out of ten my forecast is more accurate than theirs...I am thinking they are "job security" trained in school...so where is this going? Well it is moving on into a commentary about weather...and people who just dont get it.... Living in Washington State for much of my life...and spending a portion of that at the mouth of the Straight of Jon De Fuca (one of the worlds most stormy regions)....I learned (from my mother) to chart the weather on my calendar every day...I still have these calendars if any weather men would like to study them... What I discovered...NOTHING! In Washington state NO two years are the same...the only thing you can guarantee there is that 92% of the year it will be precipitating...unless you live in Neah Bay then 99.6% of the time it is WET! And that the people there have fins. So through the rain we lived...makes doing the hair a very short lived process. But every five years or so the rain would just not show up....and that my friends was a year they called water shortages....now how can you run out of water when it falls from the sky so much of the time? anyway...those years we actually felt like the sunshine liked us. BUT...that fire luxery was short lived and the following winter would allow us to see that white fluffy stuff I missed so much.....Two inches and I would pile it on the stairs for the kid to sled...complete with mittens and hat at 40 degrees..but by morning the rain had returned and the snow hill became steps again. I remember one year we awoke to find about three inches on the ground...and it was still falling. Waking the children we forgot breakfast as we raced to get ready to join the neighbors in a sledding adventure. Now remember we lived in the city...the only hill we could find was the one leading to the now closed free way....just half an acre of grassy hill surrounded by two major roads and an on ramp....became a winter paradise for five young kids and their parents. We spent the day sledding untill the snow was mud from the amount of usage. That afternoon we returned home and realized we were very hungry lol....well we are in Washington....so out came the chicken and BBQ's (chicken BBQs best in the rain...but not so good in the cold)...finally we sat on the porch with our plates and mittens and watched the sun set...enjoying the time with the kids and neighbors. We awoke the next morning to over a foot of new snow....now this put the Pierce and King county areas on complete stop mode....Nothing moved for almost three days....that my friends and family was the most beautiful three days I had in the 18 years I lived in that state. To see a state of complete activity come to a stand still for a few days is like witnessing a miracle. Better than that was watching the parents and their children play snow games in the closed streets.... Why were they no plowing? Well that is the moral of this story...see snow comes very infrequently to the west side of that state...they need rudders on their cars not studs, on the other side of the mountain range however, is a completely different story...so one year King County got together with Pierce county...they needed money in their budgets...as several bridges and roads needed repair (this is the ironci part) Their brilliant idea for quick cash was to sell all the snow plows and sanders except one for the inter state to Yakima and their surrounding counties....thus we had money for roads...they had workable plows....all were happy till that winter.... So what of the roads? How did they get plowed with just one plow? They did not....someone forgot the airport....with one of the nations leading international airports that plow was very busy just keeping a runway open for those air travelers. Thus...the entire Pierce County and King county area came to a stand still till the rain came back....a full week of almost complete shut down....like a metropolitan ghost town...and a wonderful memory for my kids and I....hope they remember that week as I do....we lived off Christmas goodies and garbage as the grocery store shelves were bare from the mass panick that ensued when the snow first began to fall...