The $4 barrier

It finally happened that I paid $4/gallon for REGULAR gas. I've been over $4/gallon for premium for a while, but had to fill up the car that takes the "cheap gas" today. It doesn't seem like that long ago we broke the $2 threshold.

That said I think higher gas prices are a good thing. While I hate to see the price of any consumable go up -- higher gas prices cost Monica and I around $1000/year which is not chump change -- my hope is that we hit the pain threshold where people change their driving behaviors.
At some point people get out of their cars and take public transit to work, move or change jobs closer to home, run fewer errands or consolidate them, or do lots of things to get cars off the road. And cars off the road and less dependence on oil is a good thing.

It's always amazing to see how a pseudo holiday reduces traffic to a non-factor. On Friday, the Friday before a three-day weekend, I hit almost no traffic going to work leaving at a time where I'd normally drive 20 MPH much of the way. If we could permanently reduce the number of cars on the road (in the Seattle area) by just 10-15%, we'd go back to rush hour and not rush hours from 7-10 and 3-7. And no one would complain about that.

It's Been One Week

... since the big snow and there's still plenty left on the ground. Despite forecasts that "tomorrow" would be high 30s and sunny, it hasn't happened. We even got a little more snow on Saturday and about half an inch yesterday. I think Seattle got hit harder than we did this time.

Monday was the first day since the snow that the temperature got above freezing but it was overcast, and once the sun set the temperatures dropped below again. Yesterday the high was only 32. Today is really the first good melting day. It was 33 when I woke up and got as high as 39 (!) and is still 34 as I write. I found out that one of our friends nearby has a weather station in his yard so I'm able to get very accurate historical data for our house.

Our driveway which gets sun is down to a thin layer and the trees are all snowfree. Where I shoveled the deck, it's actually dry. But the shady parts of the deck still have a couple inches of snow and our "grass" is all white. The forecast is more snow tomorrow though Friday is supposed to be rainy and should wash away what's left. In 14 years here I've never seen snow stick around this long.

Thankfully, the roads are all fine though it's a bit dicey between our cul-de-sac and the main road.

Let it stop, let it stop, let it stop

There's a reason the famous lyric is since we've no place to go, let it snow...

If you have places to go, snow isn't any fun. And it's an order of magnitude worse here where we simply aren't used to it and don't know how to deal with it. It snowed in Seattle Wednesday night starting about 4:30. On the plateau, we got seven inches. Monica left work in Everett at 4:20 and by 7:20 she had only made it to Redmond -- 30 miles, all highway and usually an hour in traffic. And that was the fast part. Of course, this incident didn't help. She never made it home and wound up turning around and heading back to Bellevue (8 miles, 15 minutes) and spending the night at a friend's house.

Right now everything is still covered in snow, though it's melted down to a couple of inches in the sunny area and three or four in the shade. It was supposed to be mid 30s and sunny today but was overcast and never got above freezing and we actually got some more flurries. Tommorow is supposed to be 35; we can only hope, though I'll be inside watching football either way.