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eric on Nov 7th 2009 Random Life Stuff

Seattle and Hail – it’s the Wild Wild West!

As I’ve said, we’ve been here a year. I’m still not used to the weather. Ok, I get it, it rains quite a bit in Seattle. But generally that rain is more like mist and drizzle. There’s hardly ever a steady rain and almost never anything we easterners would call a downpour.

But on Thursday night we had an honest-to-god thunderstorm. I’ve heard thunder exactly once or twice since moving here. It was random and sort of an anomaly. I think it was snowing. Just a few weeks ago, I overheard some Seattleites talking about “that thunderstorm we had a few years ago.” These things are rare.

Nevertheless, Thursday night through Friday we had thunder, lightening, pouring rain and hail. There’s never hail here! Amazing! People will be talking about this for literally years.

Wind or lightening or something knocked over a tree and killed a guy. That never happens in Seattle. In Pennsylvania, that’s not unheard of. In Oklahoma, you’re lucky to die in a nonviolent-weather related situation.

Of course, about an hour after the hail on Friday, it was sunny and the roads were dry. Just in time for more hail around 5pm.

This is, apparently, our fall. Only extreme.

Since we’ve moved here, we’ve seen the extreme weather. Seattleites must love to say “it’s never like this!” When it snowed a few inches, shutting down the city for a week, everyone was all like “whoa! it’s never like this!” When it got up to 100 degrees this past summer, everyone insisted that this had never ever happened before, not once! And now with the thunderstorms, I’m hearing it again!

Listen, Seattle, I don’t believe you. It rains, it snows and it gets hot here, just like anywhere else. It’s just that when it rains real hard, nobody has umbrellas. When it snows, nobody has a shovel and the city hasn’t got a snowplow. When it gets hot, people die because there isn’t air conditioning out here.

Seattle is like the wild west. Except, without Sam Elliot and Kool Moe Dee. Sure, there’s no saloons (we’ve got cafes!), this isn’t the desert (it’s sort of a rain forest) and we don’t have lone gunmen (just douchie hipsters that make you wish we did) – but make no mistake, this is wild, untamed land with crazy weather that could pretty much do anything at any moment.

But most likely it’ll be overcast for a bit and then surprisingly sunny till the clouds roll in and it rains a little.

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