Dylan from Metroblogging has a fantastic outsiders take on what happens when it snows in Seattle. The city itself gets about 2-4 inches of snow a year, once or so per year, that sticks for two days at most. And we all freak out and stay home.

Or go skiing. Which is part of the irony – in a city of die hard skiiers and boarders, not 45 minutes away from decent slopes, we collectively freak out when that weird white stuff hits our streets.

To the list:

Five things you can count on:

LIVE COVERAGE from the TOP OF QUEEN ANNE! (Doesn’t matter that High Point in West Seattle is a couple hundred feet higher, it’s QUEEN ANNE, and the TV god hath decreed that all LIVE OMIGAWD IT MIGHT SNOW shots in Seattle must be taken from the TOP OF QUEEN ANNE!)

LIVE COVERAGE from SNOQUALMIE PASS!!!! (Made better his year by the rockslides.)

All broadcasters will wear slick, stylish custom KING/KIRO/KOMO/Q13 all-weather -70F coats from Eddie Bauer or REI.

No sudden run on bread and milk at the stores. Seattleites have never done that, unlike other places in this country. It’s either because Seattleites buy their soy milk from their organic producer and their bread from an artisan baker, or it’s because they know the snow is usually gone by noon.

Absolute confusion about the Metro snow routes. Because of the hills, Metro routes shift during the snow, but it’s never particularly clear where they get shifted to.

Heather Leigh has her own take on the beauty of snow days in our little town.

Of course, I grew up in Sunnyvale, California, where the 3 weeks of the year where the temp drops to the 40s (while still sunny) were generally known as the “Great Freeze of 198x”.