I left my lovely little island one ferry sailing before I needed to on Sunday-because it started to snow-again-and I needed to get to Victoria before the afternoon sailing to Port Angeles. Made the ferry with plenty of time to spare, did what I had to do in Washington and settled in for the night. Couldn't get the early ferry back (long story and not weather related so never mind) so I decided that rather than wait until 2 pm, I would head up to Port Townsend and go home that way. Never been there, but I've got the GPS, so I figure I'm good to go. Got the car all packed and the house locked up, opened the garage door-and there was 5 inches of snow on the ground and it was coming down fast in cotton ball sized flakes. (Have I said yet that I hate snow-vowed I would never again live where it snowed-and that friends got me an embroidered baseball cap that I proudly wear that says "Weather Weenie"?) It took almost 2 hours to get 5 miles from the ferry at an average of 28 miles an hour-watching people sliding all over the road and fill up the ditches and very happy I have a truck with 4WD and big burly snow tires. After waiting 40 minutes for a snowplow to unearth some cars blocking the road, and realizing that I was never going to make the ferry there, I turned around and went back to Port Angeles and lined up for the 2 pm ferry. The wind was blowing all those big snowflakes (still snowing as hard as it was at 9 am) horizontally fast enough that foolish pigeons who were trying to fly into the wind were flapping their wings as hard as they could and were still blowing backwards. Rode the ferry, which felt like a rowboat on a whitewater rafting river, and disembarked in Victoria, 1 1/2 hours from home. The traffic report said "please do not drive in Victoria, the gridlock is incredible". Wonderful. It had been snowing all over Vancouver Island all day. Finally made it home at 8 pm. Temp was about 20F, no idea how much lower with the wind chill, but quite a bit.
Miserable enough for you, WRL?
