Behind the Scenes

Seattle weather

Brownfield’s Tom Steever left the Midwest deep-freeze at 0-dark-thirty Saturday morning to fly west to Seattle to cover the American Farm Bureau Annual Meeting.  About the weather, Tom has this to say:

I’m accustomed to covering American Farm Bureau annual meetings generally in a warm weather climate. It gives members a mid-winter break from the cold. This year, however, many were scratching their heads about the choice of Seattle, Washington, for a major farm convention in January. The sites are necessarily selected years in advance so that the thousands of attendees can be accommodated.

One might understandably hear some grumbling about being in the Pacific Northwest at this time of the year, but that’s not the case this year. Who knew? Seattle, perched on the beautiful far upper-lefthand corner of the U.S., is arguably getting some of the nicest weather in the country at the moment. As I write this, there’s a gentle rain falling, but upon arrival Saturday, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the wool coat that was barely enough to keep me from suffering exposure while preparing for departure was now too much for the Seattle “heat.” My estimate is that we experienced, at the least, a fifty degree upward temperature swing from Mid-Missouri. We’re not alone; a lot of the country is currently in a figurative deep freeze. My friend Erik Ness from the New Mexico Farm Bureau proclaimed that the border town of El Paso, Texas, his departure point, was colder than Seattle.

So among the comments about Bob Stallman’s address, the great seafood and the somewhat baffling layout of the Seattle Convention Center, is the conversation from those who are resigned to the fact that they’ve come from wherever home is experience the better weather of Seattle.

The fact is, Washington Farm Bureau President Steve Appel had his work cut out to get the rest of the American Farm Bureau Board to agree to come to the Far Northwest in the winter because they feared what Seattle weather would do to attendance. To quote Appel, “If you don’t like the weather here, I’d invite you to go home and enjoy your own weather!”