There's no winter in Seattle

I wrote something along these lines to a Chicago buddy in an email, but I thought I'd post on it to get this important emergency message out: Seattle has the lamest winter ever.

I was onboard the bandwagon when Seattle went to the SuperBowl. I even went to a playoff game and bought a hat. I like the hat so much I retrieved it from the balcony below after a drunken mishap (is there any better kind?).

I happily count myself among the liberal minded "left coasters" of whom Seattle has in abundance (liberal in the classic sense). Funky artsy-fartsy neighborhoods: fine. No crime: awesome. Decriminalized pot: great. I'll even root for the local university when they're not playing Michigan. But I'm drawing the line right here at the weather, Seattle. Winter is not harsh here, at all.

Oh sure it rained alot. A record for days of consecutive rain was almost broken (the record is something like 33 days and we got to something like 27). But it didn't snow once and the coldest it ever got was like 20 degrees at night, 40's in the day. Let me dwell on that a bit in case you missed the implications. The coldest it got was above freezing in the daytime.

That's a pang of jealousy, midwesterners. Above freezing during winter at all is balmy. I have so far turned the heat on twice since I've lived here, and once was just for the whiny girl I had over.

Seattle, I laugh at your pussy winter. Ha ha! You call this a winter? We call that late spring/early summer in the midwest. Even the rain is a pussified misty form of rain, so gentle that you don't mind standing in it at the bow of the ferry. Maybe it picks up in summer, but I have heard exactly one thunderclap since I've lived here.

The much ballyhooed rain of Seattle is a fucking joke. The annual rainfall here is lower than DC and NYC (thanks Neckfro). Maybe it's a conspiracy to keep midwesterners from moving here.

There's none of those hail filled, tornado startin', power cuttin', sewer overflowin', oh my god the roof is going to collapse, torrential shitstorms you get in the midwest over here! It's just warm misty rain. It's kind of nice actually, if you're out running or something.

And of course all the Seattlites bitch and complain about how cold it is, with the barest wisp of a concept of what it truly means to be "frigid". Let me help you out here a little bit, my confused Seattle friends. And just for the record, I am not exaggerating or making any of these up.

"Frigid" is walking outside and your boogers noticeably freezing the instant you cross the threshold. If you're not sure if this has happened to you or not, it hasn't. It's not a sensation one looks forward to because it's usually followed quickly by "I can't feel my toes".

"Frigid" is not standing outside in a t-shirt in January, and complaining about how cold it is. If you can place yourself out of discomfort by wearing a windbreaker, it is by definition not cold. Might I suggest "nippy".

"Frigid" is going to a movie and coming out and finding your car encased within an inch thick coating of ice. You think I'm exaggerating, I assure you that I am not.

"Frigid" is not simply seeing your breath.

"Frigid" is keeping gloves and some way of protecting your ears in your car at all times because you'd get frostbite walking from the parking lot to whichever building you're going to (the ears are the worst, aren't they?). If you don't factor frostbite into your daily routine for a stretch of at least 1 month per year, shut up right now because you are not allowed to bitch about the cold. Frigid is also running your hands under warm water after forgetting your gloves.

"Frigid" is not any temperature above 32 degrees! We can debate at which temperature "frigid" starts, but we can all agree that it's below freezing. It actually causes me physical pain to hear people say "It's freezing outside" when it's 40 degrees. If it's not cold enough to freeze a glass of water, it is -- literally and figuratively -- NOT FREEZING.

"Frigid" is discovering a bottled water in your car, that was parked in the garage, that's as solid as a throng of senior citizens on pancake day (I don't know what that means either, but it sure paints an interesting visual).

"Frigid" is when a 30 minute commute becomes a 3 hour snarl. Yes, it has actually taken me 3 hours to drive home before. Thankfully that only happened once. Have you ever seriously considered peeing into a bottle? Seattlites like to bitch about the traffic too, and of course they have no idea what really bad traffic is like, but I'll admit that it sucks here. Seattle has bad traffic on the freeways during rushhour anyway. But they've never had anything like the snowstorm/traffic jam that shut down Chicago the day before I left.

It was then that I heard the funniest traffic report of all time, an instant classic. This report is burned into my memory next to The Simpsons and Monty Python quotes, the safest place in my memory. Keep in mind that most of the humor stems from the fact that I was home already and moving soon, so I wouldn't have to deal with it for much longer.

The report went something like this, "... we don't even have estimates for driving times anywhere ... assume it's at least 3 hours to go anywhere on any highway in any direction, probably more ... you might be better off getting a motel room by your work ... there are a few accidents that you should try to avoid ... [list of about 20 intersections with accidents] ... " and then, as if it were an afterthought, they tacked on, "... aaaaaaaand there's a plane at the intersection of 55th and Central" and then quickly cut away to something else without further explanation.

Now in hindsight it's not so funny because a 6 year old boy died, but at the time this was the funniest thing I had ever fucking heard. It was that pause, that hesitation to mention the friggin' plane in the middle of the friggin' road for frig's sake, only including it as an afterthought, ya know, if they can get around to it. And then they just cut away as though planes winding up at intersections are as natural as can be.

Comedy people, pure comedy. I spent about 20 minutes laughing my ass off before calling people to share the fun. You'll never hear a traffic report like that in Seattle.

So anyway. These are the wimpy lower 48 forms of frigid. If you want to know what true cold is like, go spend a winter in Alaska or Canada (that's the big state we ignore next to Alaska, north of North Dakota). I doubt you've ever seen an engine block warmer, if you've even heard of one before now.

In its defense, this is an unusually warm winter for Seattle. But that doesn't excuse all the whiny bitching about the cold I keep hearing.

Anyone breaking the cold bitching rule will be tracked down by a crack team of Canadians who will give you a sound hockeystick drubbing while lecturing you on all the various ways their country is blah, blah, blah, I don't know what goes here because no one listens that far into a Canadian's schpiel. But you're going to! So quit your bitchin' about the cold Seattle!

Don't get me wrong, I like it that the winter is so mild. I'm just annoyed by all the bitching.