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A warm feeling when snow’s in the forecast

Published 10:30 am Thursday, December 15, 2016

By Doug Parry

Ian Terry / The Herald A Washington State Ferry heads from Kingston to Edmonds early Thursday morning as the Olympic Mountains loom in the distance. Lowland snow with a possible accumulation of 1-3 inches is expected Thursday evening. Photo taken on 12082016
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Ian Terry / The Herald A Washington State Ferry heads from Kingston to Edmonds early Thursday morning as the Olympic Mountains loom in the distance. Lowland snow with a possible accumulation of 1-3 inches is expected Thursday evening. Photo taken on 12082016

Ian Terry / The Herald A Washington State Ferry heads from Kingston to Edmonds early Thursday morning as the Olympic Mountains loom in the distance. Lowland snow with a possible accumulation of 1-3 inches is expected Thursday evening. Photo taken on 12082016
Snow and slush covers 196th Street Southwest in Lynnwood as traffic moves along the morning of Dec. 9. (Ian Terry / The Herald)

Did you know there’s MORE SNOW in the forecast?

Probably not much, and not for another week or two, but did your heart flutter when you saw those words? If it did, you might be a Puget Sounder. Even a hint of snow in the forecast triggers a full-on freakout complete with crisis coverage in the local media and a mad rush to the grocery store to hoard beef jerky.

In our latest poll at HeraldNet.com, we asked how you feel about snow, and we broke the vote down into three categories:

The enthusiasts. A majority — 55 percent — answered “bring it on!” These are the people who ask for REI gift cards for Christmas, who always have their Gore-Tex and snowboards handy, who love a chance to show what their all-wheel-drive cars can do, yet who somehow still just can’t make it to work when it snows.

The Goldilocks. These are the 18 percent in our poll who answered “it’s fine until it becomes an inconvenience.” They want just enough snow to make the scenery pretty, but not enough to muck up the roads. It’s got to be just right. You can spot a Goldilocks from the characteristic whine when a full winter passes without snow. It’s very similar to the whine they produce when snow has made it too risky to drive and they’ve been stuck in their house for a few hours.

The chionophobes. Did you know there’s a word for people who dislike or fear snow? Yup, chionophobia. Twenty-seven percent in our poll said “it should stay in the mountains” along with other scary things like grizzly bears, mountain lions and chipmunks. Good news for these folks: As global warming turns Everett into San Diego over the next century, it’s bound to become a chionophobe’s paradise.

And when future Puget Sounders sip their Mai Tais under palm trees, they’ll wonder what we all were freaking out about.

— Doug Parry, parryracer@gmail.com; @parryracer

Speaking of the future, Amazon recently made its first drone delivery. That has us A) Looking to the skies for our new AP Stylebooks; and B) Wondering what your feelings are toward the tech giant possibly heli-droning your deliveries.

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