What Now?

It has been, thus far, a typical late Fall/early Winter in the Seattle area; dreary and overcast much of the time. But there's been snow on the ground for about a week now, and that's been something of a twist. There's something of a peculiar phenomenon I've noticed in the past year or so, and that is that deviations from the typical weather and temperature patterns have routinely started to last longer than the initial forecasts say they will. What was originally forecast to be just a couple days' worth of colder-than-average temperatures has stretched into a week, and it may drag on for a couple more days at that.

It brings home the difficulties of making these sorts of predictions, even in a fairly boring climate like that of the Puget Sound area, once things start to change here and there. Once the old patterns begin to suffer disruptions, it can be difficult to determine what the new pattern will be.

I suppose that a lot of things are like that. And I understand a bit more why people can become so bent out of shape when things shift beneath their feet. Predictability can be dull, but it can also be very comforting. It's one less thing to worry about. And although many people seem to be quite good at worrying about things, it's still true that too much of it is not healthy for most. And predictability, or at least the appearance of predictability, can give people a break from that.

Of course, there is more to it than that. A good portion of the local built environment was put in place with the understanding that it would rarely, if ever, be snow-covered. And local services tended to make the same assumption. That prediction no longer being reliably true will mean some significant changes may have to be made. We'll see how the area adapts to it all. In the meantime, I'm learning to live with a bit more uncertainty in what each day will bring. It's been interesting.