The forecast changed rapidly and some times the news meteorologists have been wrong.  But not a few days ago.

I drove up to my Christmas destination on the evening of the 23rd.  It was really crazy.  When I left it was 73 out.  a 2.5 hour drive later and it was in the 40’s.  The original forecast earlier that day talked about a chance of a trace of snow and really cold weather over Christmas.  When I arrived the forecast change to 1-2″ of snow.  Now bedtime we check again and now it’s changed to 2-4″ of snow but not until mid day after some rain and sleet.

So when we woke up, nothing major was taking place and my mother in law and I were headed into town to get some last minute things a little more food, just in case we lost power, etc.  About 9 or so, sleet was starting to accumulate pretty fast so we took off.  For me the roads were not that bad.  Mostly slush at this point.  By the time we were done, all the non snow driving people were getting stuck and trying to do things you just don’t do in the snowy weather.  Then the winds pick up to a constant 20-30 mph level.  Sleet hurts when it pelts you in the face at this speed.

By the time we got home they issued a blizzard warning and the snow started falling.  It was just crazy.  I think in total we got 7-8″.  The snow drifts with the 50mph gusts created some areas that were over 20″ deep.  It was fun and really cold, but it was nice to have a white Christmas.

It all started about 4am when the alarms went off and we hurried to get ready in time for the shuttle to pick us up.  Once we got to the airport I slightly freaked out since there were hundreds of people in the ticketing area.  Thankfully they all were not going to the same airline as us.  Security was very light at 6am and in fact we just walked up with no line to wait in.  Then the normal wait before boarding, etc.  So as we begin to board and we pass through the first area my wife and I heard a crackle in the radio and they said to halt boarding for a potential maintenance issue.  “Oh great” was our first thought.  So what we did was sit or should I say stand in between the plane and the boarding area on the Jetway.  I knew from past flying experience that if we got on the plane we were stuck and they would not let us off for any reason.  So we just stood there watching these people look over the plane.  After awhile we asked the boarding agent if we could come back out to the seating area and she said if we did they would have to take us off the plane.  “oh great”  So now we wait in limbo.  After awhile we hear that there is a dent in the plane and they are talking with corporate about it and people on the ground were taking pictures, etc.

So to make a longer story shorter, they finally take everyone off of the plane and we go find some comfy seats and sit it out while they fix this dent.  We were supposed to take off at 7:30am and I think we finally made it about 1:30pm.  So we had a nice 6 hour delay.  What we were really worried about was the pending storms that were going to hit Seattle.

Yep we didn’t beat them, in fact in snowed about 1″ I do believe before we got there.  I swear we were going to slide off of the runway.  As I sit and write this on Christmas Eve, It’s snowing again.  So far 2″ this morning on top of the 10-12″ we already had on the ground.  So looks like this will be a white Christmas after all.

It’s so beautiful to watch but we are stuck with a car that is not snow worthy.

More trip updates later.

This weather has just been crazy.  Yesterday parts of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex had massive snowfall amounts.  Some places up by the red river has 6-8″ of snow while our house had, like ZERO..

Oh well, I’m ready for spring like temps and some spring storms…