The Storm That Snarled the Wires: Seattle's First Snow of 1895
Three inches of snow fall on the city in a single evening, telegraph lines between Portland and Tacoma go dead, and the streetcar companies send out their plows to keep the tracks clear.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The first snow of the new year settled down on the city last evening. Snow began falling about 7 o'clock and continued in fitful spells until about 9 o'clock, when it steadied down for a genuine fall. At 12 o'clock the streets were covered with about three inches of the beautiful, with every prospect of a continuance. The snow was fine and readily stuck to anything it came in contact with. The storm appears to be general in Western Washington and Oregon, and has paralysed the telegraph wires between Portland and Tacoma, along the line of the Northern Pacific.
The Postal Telegraph Company lost two south wires at 9 o'clock and recovered one soon afterward, but lost it again. At midnight its one remaining wire was all right. The wires north were up, the storm evidently not having reached there. The two wires were lost between Centralia and Tacoma. The Western Union lost five of its south wires near Castle Rock, on the Northern Pacific road, at 4 o'clock, and secured communication with Portland and San Francisco by way of Spokane. The line east by way of Spokane and Helena was all right. The telephone wires in the city and to Everett and Tacoma were all right up to midnight.
Observer Salisbury, in charge of the weather office in this city, has issued the following weather synopsis: "The barometer has fallen at all stations except Helena. A decided storm area is central off the Oregon coast, the pressure being lowest at Fort Canby, where it is 29.70 inches. Rain or snow is falling at nearly all stations reporting. The wind at Tatoosh Island, off Cape Flattery, was thirty-six miles an hour this morning. A spell of stormy weather is upon us again."
As soon as the snow began to gather thickly on the streets and it became evident that the fall would be a heavy one, the street car companies got out their snow plows and the night was put in keeping the tracks clear, so that traffic could not be interrupted. At 1 o'clock this morning about two inches of snow had fallen, and the air was still full of descending whiteness.
“A spell of stormy weather is upon us again.”
Seattle still measures a winter by how a few inches of snow shut down its wires and transit — the same anxious rhythm appears here in 1895, when streetcar crews worked all night to keep the tracks clear. Then it was telegraph poles between Centralia and Tacoma; today it's power lines and a city that stops for a flake. The storm report itself, phoned in by an official Observer, reads like a modern weather-service bulletin.
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