1955 seattle winter

Show Seconds. Modern Theme. Jaipur, India. Winter Solstice on Thursday, December 22, Winter Solstice Time - PM. Winter Solstice Sunrise - AM. Winter Solstice Sunset - PM. It is generally appreciated that our bigger snows are especially useful for story telling and malingering. But all snows, especially the big ones, are also political. We will agree that a low-pressure front off the coast may have foreign relations with a high-pressure system out of Canada, but the ordinary politics of snow is a mix of public service and resentment.

Snows are good for complaining, much of it thrown at authorities. This Republican was elected mayor in a more-or-less Democratic town in By the time drivers got in line to fishtail into guardrails, as described above, Braman was bi-partisan.

With the power of his office, he both made and helped make big things happen, like the first federal Model Cities grant directed to any city, and the local bond issues of Forward Thrust, a grand civic improvement initiative that perhaps only a Democrat could have named. Forward Thrust went after federal money for both cleaning up Lake Washington and building rapid transit through the city. That voters rejected the latter when asked to raise only 25 percent of the total bill was a great disappointment to Braman, whose ideology by then was more about progress than parsimony.

Rising on the morning of December 27, , Braman felt the arctic front that had moved into town during the night. He probably shuddered with thoughts of what might be coming, and, indeed, soon learned that Seattle was almost surrounded. That morning it was snowing in both Hoquiam near the coast and in Bellingham. Science explained it, drops released by moist air riding over cold air turn to snow.

For two days cold prevailed over snow. The low temperature for the 29th was 13 degrees. More remarkably, the high temperature of 19 degrees was lower than the previous record low for that date: 21 degrees in Street Department employees and police rushed and stumbled to barricade steeper streets before drivers could try them. Still, by mid-morning several downtown intersections were plugged with stalled cars.

When traffic jams were spotted, sand trucks were sent to help unsnarl them. Earlier, Braman had avoided using sand for the snow of December 18, and he would like to have kept the sand in its box again, but could not. Braman and Finney were criticized for waiting too long to call out the plows.

He said maintenance crews did begin to plow but then found that traction was worse on the ice that the snow-removal crews uncovered. The State Highway Department found this to be true on the freeway, too, Braman said. In this city of sporting hills, improvised toboggans also compressed snow. While it may be said to have first hit Seattle on the last day of , snow repeatedly jabbed through January. Seattle Times local humorist Byron Fish described how during the dumping he got a long-distance telephone call from a friend in Nome, Alaska, who felt deeply for Fish in his plight of having to walk three blocks through the snow for groceries.

Seattle schools were closed for the first time in 19 years — that is, since It beat by one day the previous record from January I best remember the Big Snow of for the uncanny accuracy of my snowballing.

At the time, I was on the staff of a weekly tabloid called the Helix. It is fair to think of the popular tabloid as a sort of hybrid of the then-soon-to-arrive Weekly and the distant Stranger.

Our office was near the south end of the University Bridge, and just as important, near the Red Robin tavern, the old one, which was run by brothers Sam and Saul, but owned — and we did not know it at the time — by Ivar Haglund. At some point the snow effectively stopped all traffic. I had read somewhere of a beer experiment at a country club in the south. Snow began falling on January 5, , immediately following Territorial Governor Elisha Ferry's State of the Territory message assuring the world that "ice and snow are almost unknown in Washington Territory.

Two years later, on February 9, , a gale blew six cattle cars and a caboose into Elliott Bay. Boating on the tributaries was shut down except for the sternwheeler W. Merwin that backed its way down the Snohomish River to salt water by cracking the ice with its paddle wheel. A short snow of two inches covered Seattle on the February 8, and held.

A thaw began on February 15, deceptively, for three days later 18 inches of fresh wet snow fell on the community of about 8, citizens. By one newspaper account the big snow of began on January 27 and kept up almost steadily dropping 45 inches before it stopped on the February 8, On February 3, a reading of 5 degrees below zero was claimed at Woodland Park on Phinney Ridge, while down the hill on Green Lake the ice was six inches thick.

In his book Seattle , long-time Post-Intelligencer contributor Nard Jones notes of the snow and cold that "it frightened a good many Seattleites nearly to death; they thought the end of the world was on its way and not in accordance with the Bible. Those "last days" held until The first snows of were early. A November accumulation of Seven years later, in March , 8. That too was a record at the time for that month.

In January , this boom town of nearly , citizens had grown too big too fast for its services. The single foot of snow and accompanying cold that blew in that month filled our hotels with those citizens who could afford such plush relief but could not, nevertheless, purchase fuel for their homes. Others resorted to burning whatever was available -- old furniture, boxes, fences. On Christmas Day, , the afternoon paper noted "When the town woke up this morning the hills and dales were covered with a mantle of snow that brought to the city that dearly beloved white Christmas.

All those who dreamed they were back in New England or in the Middle Northwest ought to telephone the weatherman the joyous greetings of the holiday season. During the process of running home, he somehow managed to count the pack. There were 10 of them. When the big snow of began to fall on a cold Monday on January 31, , there may have been more cameras than shovels in the hands of amateurs. The flurry of snapshots of our second greatest snowstorm illustrate snow-stopped streetcars, closed schools, closed libraries, closed theaters, closed bridges, a clogged waterfront, collapsed roofs, and -- most sensationally -- the great dome of St.

James Cathedral, which landed in a heap in the nave and choir of the sanctuary. There were no injuries to persons. The unusually cold January already had 23 inches of snow on the ground when, on the last day of the month, it began to fall relentlessly. Between 5 p. This remains in a record -- our largest hour pile. The snow was a wet snow, and it came to a foul end -- a mayhem of mud that mutilated bridges and carried away homes. Although not regular, a Green Lake freeze is considerably more common than one on Lake Union.

In both February and January , the lesser Green lake froze over, to the joy of skaters who scrounged for clamp-on skates. Many skated past midnight. For warmth they visited the bonfires set in trashcans on the ice. On Friday, January 15, , snow began falling in Seattle, accumulating to a foot in depth, but what was obvious to residents could not be reported in the media. Wartime restrictions on information prohibited weather reports. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had some fun with the regulations: "The thermometer changed its position more than somewhat Friday night and a lot of restricted military information fell in the streets of Seattle and vicinity early yesterday morning With a mean temperature of On Friday January 13, a blizzard blasted in from the ocean.

It continued through the night and into Saturday. The temperature dropped to 11 degrees. High winds lifted the waters of Elliott Bay onto the waterfront and frozen salt water instantly stuck to anything it splashed. On Wednesday, February 1, , a Seattle Times reporter noted "Last month apparently was designed to make the old settlers forget all about the "big winters of and The big-freeze of mid-November killed thousands of trees and shrubs hereabouts, and many homeowners listed their losses the following year as tax deductions.

The first snow came unannounced in the early afternoon of the November 17, First locking arms and then fenders, workers rushed home, creating an unprecedented blending of bumpers.

More than 1, vehicles were involved in reported accidents. Included in the statistics were two accidents involving six cars. The number of two- and three-car collisions were too numerous to take special note of. On October 12, , Columbus Day, a windstorm ravaged the Puget Sound region in what the National Weather service later designated as Washington's worst weather disaster of the twentieth century.