The Seattle Winter That Shocked New York
When a Seattle colonel sent a bouquet of fresh January flowers to a snow-shrouded New York editor, the gesture became a national curiosity about Washington Territory's mild climate.
It appears that our townsman Col. C.H. Larrabee has been doing a little bit in a way from which we note the following return. The New York Evening Post, in its issue of Jan 11th, under the caption 'The Flowery Land,' edits its leader with this pleasant item: 'We send you a collection of flowers gathered by myself this day from the garden. They will give you a better idea of the difference between the Atlantic climate and our own than any words can well convey. We have had no ice as yet, and but a single frost. — C.H. Larrabee, Seattle, Jan. 1, 1877.' The flowers, which range in variety from the hardy rose to the tender pansy, reached us in excellent condition and have been the center of attraction in our sanctum ever since. It is hard for us ice-bound and snow-shrouded dwellers on the Eastern coast to realize that there is a spot, far removed from the equator, where flowers bloom in open air on the first day of January. Our astonishment is increased when we reflect that the latitude of Seattle, Washington Territory, is some eight degrees higher than that of New York City.
“It is hard for us ice-bound and snow-shrouded dwellers on the Eastern coast to realize that there is a spot, far removed from the equator, where flowers bloom in open air on the first day of January.”
Long before Seattle became famous for its mild, rainy winters, the climate served as a point of civic pride and propaganda. This 1877 story captures the eternal 'PNW smugness' regarding Eastern winters—a regional identity that persists today, even as our winters grow less predictable due to the climate crisis.
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