Western Washington Severe Weather December 2008 Day7 8:45am

Winter Wonderland - Traffic Snafu - My dog was a sled dog in a previous life

It's 29 degrees at 8:45am here in south Kitsap county, and the snow is falling. Small flakes mixed with larger, dimeish sized flakes. I woke at 8am, after peeking out of sleepy eyes a few times prior to actually deciding to lift my head off the pillow. The tree branches, with their slight dusting tricked me into thinking the few flakes that fell before closed the curtains last night was just barely improved upon overnight. What I woke to was a filled to overflowing tuna tin snow gauge and a fine dust-snow still falling in little to no breeze.

Note the tin filled this time, unlike a few nights ago when snow fell all around it but didn't accumulate inside the tin.

All local weather stations are reporting nightmarish traffic conditions. County transportation officials came on via phone and advised people to stay home and wait for conditions to ease or at least give time for the crews to clear the roadways.

Watching KIRO, a review of the DOT cameras found a man walking along side I5 as the reporter was warning people to stay in their cars as they are designed to protect you. The traffic on his side of the 6 lane highway had been halted about 200 yards behind him but as we were watching it cleared and headed towards him with a city bus in the lead. We were all shocked and a little worried as the bus and trailing line of traffic approached him. To everyones surprise, least of all the traffic reporters, the bus stopped alongside the pedestrian and encouraged him to hop on! The news room cheered along with me! YEAH Seattle Metro!

You can watch live by clicking this link: http://www.kirotv.com/video/17955723/index.html

My dog, as I previously blogged, is not much of a foul weather pet. She doesn't like to get her feet wet. She has seen and been in snow before this storm, an didn't make much of it aside from seeming a little annoyed about her feet being wet. But THIS snow, she is so curious about it. She doesn't normally go outside alone, much less go out and just hang out alone but that is what she has been doing since day1. She has been standing and smelling the wind for minutes, or a particular pile of snow.... pushing aside the pile with a paw and sniffing some more. A few minutes ago I looked out to see her just standing by the door looking out across the yard, as if she were enjoying the scenery.

I finally convinced her to come back inside as she began gathering snow on her coat. A narrow snowless area remains just under the eaves, as this picture shows, and this is where tiny birds have been routing around and flipping freeze dried leaves looking for bugcicles I presume. I tossed out some wild bird seed in case I'm wrong.

The temperature has dropped 6 degrees since about 5:30am, and the TV weather is reporting the snow showers will be slowing however it has only picked up here since 8:00am and is still steadily snowing now here on the hill near downtown Port Orchard.