It has been about a week since Seattle (and it's surrounding areas) was hit with the snow storm to end all snow storms. Just kidding, honestly the worst we got was about 6 to 8 inches but because the areas do not have a infrastructure in place to deal with snow like this the entire area shuts down. People started to panic and in some cases a 25 minute commute turned into a 5 hour commute. Seriously. That is what some people encountered this past Friday.
I personally love when this happens. I grew up in Winnipeg, MB, Canada so I am quite the experienced winter driver and I have an AWD vehicle. I love driving in the snow and I love how quiet the city becomes. Areas near freeways become quiet enough to record sounds around because no one wants to drive.
During the first snowfall (last week) I began taking advantage of the situation by capturing as many sounds as I could get. I started with outdoor snow footsteps recorded with a CMIT and then upgraded to some tire snow surface recordings with a co worker using my vehicle. We were the only ones at work so we went to the top of our work's parking garage and captured as many different driving on snow recordings we could get. My vehicle is a Hybrid so we could get some pretty good recordings having him boom out of the back seat window with a CMIT.
After my first adventure playing in the snow things returned to normal, at least until this past Friday when the city shut down again. This time with even more snow then last time. It wasn't too bad to drive in but I did not need to leave home to capture the next set of winter wonderland sounds. I noticed that outside my garage at home quite a collection of icicles had formed. I am not a fan of icicles in that location, although they look cool they are a bit too close to where my girlfriend parks her car for my comfort. So as a good boyfriend should, I set my sights to knock them down. But I had to jump at the chance to record them while I knocked them down.
Before I go I have to share this pic with you. I took it on Thursday, the day before the second snow fall. We had gone to 2 different grocery stores to collect food just in case and this was the result of the fear of Snowpocalypse 2.
