Dust off those skis and snowboards. After snow reached Seattle last week, the mountains have reportedly collected enough snow to be open for business starting this Wednesday, December 1. Details below, but do remember that everything is subject to the weather, so be sure to check the current conditions before heading out. more ›

Norman Ollestad will be reading from his book, Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, at Elliott Bay Book Company on June 15, at 7:30 p.m. Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, is both a chilling account of survival and a heartwarming coming-of-age story based around Norman Ollestad and his relationship with his father, the late Norman Ollestad. more ›

Due to what Cliff Mass calls a "sharp inversion," we're freezing our foggy asses off down here in the lowlands while the mountains are a tropical summer fantasy. more ›

Via WSDOT's Twitter, we hear that a winter storm watch predicts two feet of new snow for the Cascades by tomorrow evening. Not coincidentally, Stevens Pass will be closed for 20 minutes Wednesday "sometime between 8 a.m. and noon"--sounds like they're sending Comcast out--for avalanche preparedness work. It's always good to be prepared for avalanches, because otherwise people die. Alpental is reporting a 74-inch base up top--that's crazy. Two weeks ago they didn't have a base. more ›

Western Washington is on official flood watch this morning, announced the National Weather Service. Another storm is on its way in, but this time around, the temperatures won't be cold enough to turn precipitation into snow. Now would be a great time to make sure your outside drains are unplugged and to move your photo albums in the basement to high ground, just in case the flood watch turns into a flood warning and the flood warning turns into an honest flood. more ›

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Meteorologists are predicting heavy snow this Friday for north King County and the mountains, and if that isn't worthy of an exclamation point then we're not sure what is! Snow means, of course, sitting inside with peanut butter hot chocolate and thinking dreamy philosophical thoughts about individuality (snowflakes, etc.) or James Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service). It means reading Snow by Orhan Pamuk, A Winter's Love by Madeleine L'Engle, or The Winter Of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck. more ›

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With temperatures today solidly in the low, mid-50s and sun shining down on us, it’s hard for this Seattlest to believe that just this past weekend we were skiing at Mt. Baker in the best powder we’ve encountered. more ›

Sometimes a good ski movie can console you during an off year, but we're already having a record-breaking snow season (ok, it's no 1998, but still, the quality and volume of the snow we've been getting this year is reminiscent of our days growing up in Utah for what that's worth). So maybe you don't need a powder porn flick to fuel your stoke, but we're thinking that Steep (showing in a limited run at the Varsity) will be worth a viewing regardless. (It's a limited run, and we think tomorrow night is the last night, but we can't tell from the website or their phone recording, so you might want to hustle out and see it tonight.) more ›

Dammit, neither were we. For opening day, Mr. Seattlest got up in the wee hours and was in lot 2 about 30 minutes before the lift opened, ending up about 20th in line. The guys waiting for first chair up front were drinking PBR tall boys and said (and acted like) they'd been there since about 7am. With a base of about 51", it was an excellent start. Snow was a bit heavy, and chair 2 never opened (as far as we know), but the second it does there's gonna be a full-on Chinese Downhill on 'Nash. more ›

Ski season is, thankfully, here and Seattlest couldn't be more excited. In fact, even though our friends are completely lame and won't go with us, we're off to Crystal tomorrow to take advantage of cheap lift-ticket prices (and cause we're jonesing). For a variety of reasons though, we don't own any of our own equipment and are not yet ready to buy our own stuff. So before heading out to catch some early-season slope action,... more ›