Every time a storm rolls through like the one we had last week I park my rear-wheel-drive Mustang in the garage.

This year I was fortunate enough to have my mother-in-law’s 2006 all wheel drive Chevy Equinox at my disposal so I was able to get around.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I can drive my Mustang in the snow but I love my car and don’t wish to endanger it among the motorists who don’t know how to drive their AWD or four wheel drive SUVs in the white stuff.

Plus, it’s no fun slipping around or getting stuck, nor is chaining up to get out of my neighborhood then removing the chains once out on the main roads.

Still, it’s not really the snow that gets us around here. It’s the ice that inevitably comes along with it — on the hills we have all over the region — that can cause problems.

Or the crazy thing that happened on Jan. 19 when we were all expecting it to warm up and rain.

Instead, we got freezing rain then snow on top of it, something none of the weather forecasters predicted.

In fact, Cliff Mass, a meteorologist and professor at the University of Washington whom I consider the go-to weather expert when things get extreme even essentially said, “Oops, our bad,” on behalf of weather forecasters.

OK. Actually, what he said on his blog, cliffmass.blogspot.com, “Well folks, this is not my profession’s finest hour. We had forecast the continuation of the light freezing drizzle of yesterday (an irritant, but not a major threat) and then a warm-up today with rain coming in late. Our models did not indicate that the precipitation would move so far north, so fast.”

I would bet, however, based on numerous discussions about weather preparation with Covington’s Public Works Director Glenn Akramoff, that he wasn’t surprised at all by the turn for the unexpected worst.

Back in December 2008 Akramoff told me his staff tried to be ready for any other potential circumstances that could follow snow as the weather changed such as flooding as the temperatures rose, freezing rain or wind storms. I am pulling that directly from a sentence I wrote in a story dated Dec. 18, 2008, the last big, nasty snow storm I remember.

Last week was crazy to me because I felt even more of an outsider looking in than normal.

I was able to get to work and drive around in the weather thanks to the Equinox (and, I won’t prevaricate, I love driving in the snow with the right vehicle). My house lost power but for little more than 24 hours.

At first, the snow was a lovely thing, as it coated lawns and hillsides with the perfect stuff for snowmen as well as sledding while leaving the roads passable.

It first arrived when kids weren’t in school. But then it kept kids out of school in Tahoma for four days and Kent for five. Then the power went out. We all saw the trees laden with ice and it wasn’t long before they started breaking under the weight of the frozen rain along with snow, taking out power lines, littering the road with limbs causing greater disruption than the snow.

In the midst of all that, the Los Angeles Times had the chutzpah to call Seattlites “snow wimps,” send a surge of outrage regarding the apparent hypocrisy rippling through social media and local news outlets.

Yep, other media wrote stories about how the LA Times wrote a headline calling us out up here in rainy Seattle, something which kind of made me chuckle. Still, I agree with the outrage. Ad hominem attacks don’t belong in headlines, especially for stories about weather. Seriously. Shame on the LA Times.

As I write this on Monday afternoon, I know folks in East Kent who still do not have power, while most in Covington and Maple Valley have it back.

Still, by the time this column hits print, clean up may still be under way around the region as well is in our own communities.

In the end, this is why I park my Mustang somewhere, because Mother Nature is unpredictable at best and downright cruel at worst.

Somehow, though, we all manage to get through it and with each big storm we all learn something.

And it’s late January, so, it’s entirely possible we could have another storm of some kind so I hope you’re all prepared.

It’s one thing to know how to drive in the snow, how to steer out of a skid after hitting a patch of hidden ice, but it’s another thing entirely to get through more than a day or two without a power. Especially, when like me and many of my neighbors, you have pets and young children, so that’s an area where I will try to be better prepared.