By Zach Wakefield
With a temperate marine climate, the Olympic Peninsula is known to have a mild winter compared to the rest of the state east of the Cascades.
However, winter weather hit Washington hard this February, starting on Friday the 8 and with several continuous snowfalls throughout the following days, effectively sending most of the state, including the peninsula, into hibernation for most of the week.
Not long after recovering from the wave of shoppers grabbing what they can during the windstorm and power blackout last month, stores were once again wiped clean with the approach of “snowmageddon”.
This month’s snowfall seems to be a sign of more extreme weather in Washington, setting the all-time February snowfall record for Seattle and prompting governor Jay Inslee to declare a state of emergency as major highways shut down and isolated metro areas across the state from each other.
Such large amounts of snowfall are an oddity in western Washington, and while many businesses were overwhelmed, most facilities were back open without delays by the next Friday, including Peninsula College.
Luke Robins, the president of the college, said how the snow this year affected the school and what separated this historic winter weather from past snowfalls the college has had to deal with.
“I’ve been here seven years. That’s the most snow that we’ve ever gotten that I’ve seen in one sustained storm, since I got here.”
Robins said. “It just took longer than we probably would’ve liked, in the best of all possible words, to get ready to re-open. But we were airing on the side of making sure that it was safe for people to be on campus.”
Safety was a priority for the college and most people on the road during the blizzard.
With numerous accidents and slides occurring on the main highway alone and every other side road in between covered in blankets of snow, transportation in the area was extremely limited and slow throughout the week.
Robins thanked the crews who plowed and de-iced the campus during the storm.
“Our maintenance crews and IT crews and all those people, they did amazing, amazing work in the cold, in the wet; to try to make sure that when we reopened, it was safe enough for people to be on campus because that’s our big concern.”
The snow has considerably melted since it’s initial dumping on the peninsula, but patches of snow and ice can still be found around the area, and with signs of more snowfall in future forecasts, spring is only as close as it appears to be in our calendars.
Contributions and photo by Saki Kambe