My new hobby
Considering the fact that I don’t even own a car, I’m finding my newfound fascination with the WSDOT’s Snoqualmie Pass Rockslide Updates a little disturbing.
I like how they’re thanking people for taking alternate routes, because the crazy backups that they’d been predicting apparently never happened. (This is, I think, to avoid being the department who cried wolf.) On Thursday they gave several little updates full of statistics, things like,
“During the peak travel time yesterday, noon to 6 p.m., less than half as many drivers traveled across I-90 Snoqualmie Pass as compared to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving last year.”
and
“Thanksgiving dropped from 47,377 in 2004 to 41,488 in 2005, a 12 percent reduction. Traffic on Stevens and White passes more than tripled. Traffic on Stevens Pass jumped from 1,823 in 2004 to 8,130 in 2005. Traffic on White Pass jumped from 850 in 2004 to 4,088 in 2005.”
They’re still warning people about delays coming back across, and they’re very concerned about all of the ice and snow up in the passes. If you want to extend your vacation until Monday or Tuesday, just tell your boss that the WSDOT told you to.
Or you can be like me, and stay at home watching the traffic on the webcams. I find the closeup of the rock face to be particularly poetic.
