Blizzard in action
Blizzard in action

Due to snowy weath­er, the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture will be most­ly closed for busi­ness tomor­row, leg­isla­tive lead­ers have announced. So if you were plan­ning to go down to Olympia for a com­mit­tee meet­ing or to tes­ti­fy on a bill that was due to have a hear­ing… don’t. Stay home instead, and be safe.

“Tomorrow’s hear­ings will be resched­uled as soon as pos­si­ble so that those plan­ning to tes­ti­fy on bills will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so when trav­el to Olympia is safer,” House Major­i­ty Leader Pat Sul­li­van’s office said in a statement.

“Resched­ul­ing details will fol­low. Peo­ple meet­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly with House leg­is­la­tors or staff should call ahead to see if their sched­ules have changed. Besides snow this evening, weath­er ser­vices are fore­cast­ing more snow begin­ning Mon­day after­noon. House lead­er­ship will talk again tomor­row to deter­mine Tuesday’s schedule.”

“Due to severe weath­er con­di­tions, the House and Sen­ate are can­cel­ing all com­mit­tee hear­ings on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 11th,” leg­isla­tive staff said in an announce­ment post­ed to the Leg­is­la­ture’s offi­cial web­site, leg.wa.gov.

“At this point we antic­i­pate return­ing to full oper­a­tions on Tuesday.”

Tonight’s fore­cast calls for snow, snow, and more snow through­out West­ern Wash­ing­ton. The snow threat con­tin­ues through the week, although day­time highs are sup­posed to get clos­er to forty degrees Fahren­heit as the week goes on.

The com­bined cold snap and snow threat is some­thing West­ern Wash­ing­ton rarely sees due to its mild win­ters, which are influ­enced by the Pacif­ic Ocean. Unlike many cities in the Mid­west and on the East Coast, Wash­ing­ton’s topog­ra­phy is rather hilly, which makes trav­el in snowy and icy con­di­tions much more dangerous.

Con­di­tions in parts of East­ern Wash­ing­ton are even more treach­er­ous. A Wash­ing­ton State Patrol troop­er on Sat­ur­day post­ed a short video depict­ing white­out con­di­tions near the Tri-Cities and describ­ing a pile­up of cars on I‑82.

The bot­tom line: Stay warm, avoid unnec­es­sary trav­el, and be safe!

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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