Our winter to date has been relatively dry, and some concern about the coming summer’s water supply has made its way into the popular press*. It was nice, then, to wake up this morning to a bit of snow along the shore of Lake Washington.

Much of the cold air that works its way south from Canada into the United States’ interior is barricaded to the west by the Rocky and Cascade mountains. That which does enter eastern Washington is warmed as it crosses the Rockies and is compressed on the downward slope, and further warmed as it crosses the Cascades into western Washington. We are spared the bitter cold, at least in part, by our geography and rarely experience temperatures below freezing at sea level for more than a few hours at a time.

When it does snow in the Puget Sound basin, it conventionally means that the encircling snow pack is getting a respectable bit of accumulation. The reason the country’s single‐season snowfall record is fixed to a spot about 90 miles from where I am sitting has to do with the abundance of moist air blowing in from the Pacific Ocean; if, despite all the mitigation we enjoy from the geography, it has found a way to snow at the Space Needle, it means Mount Baker is getting buried.

This winter, the big bathtub full of water to our west has been largely prevented from dumping its customary buckets‐full on us by persistent high‐pressure atmospheric systems that have driven the season’s storms to our north, making this morning’s weather an especially welcome indication of conditions in the mountains. Judging from the forecast, this lowland snow will be washed away overnight by rain, but then rain helps make it the Evergreen State, so let it pour.

* Our circumstances are nowhere near as dire as those of our neighbors to the south.