A Week of Winter

I've already mentioned that all this week we've been experiencing an Arctic blast here in Portland and that school was closed because of snow on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But, as predicted, the real storm didn't arrive until the weekend.

On Friday the snow began at about midday and it continued pretty steadily until midnight on Saturday. At times the snow slowed to flurries, but throughout Saturday afternoon and evening the snow was falling pretty steadily. All told, we got in the neighborhood of ten inches of snow by midnight on Saturday.

As you can imagine, given that school was closed three days for just a dusting of snow, the city has come to an absolute standstill. There were only about 10 people at our 8 am Mass this morning, and only about 50 at the 10 am. 

What has admittedly made things worse is that throughout the day today the snow has changed to freezing rain. We had about an inch of ice before it turned back to snow this evening. And tomorrow we are supposed to get a couple more inches of snow before it warms up ever so slightly by midweek.

As you can see, the inch-thick crust of ice cracks under you with each step and then you sink through the 8-10 inches of snow beneath. This makes for hard trudging which is, at the very least, better than slipping and sliding.

I chipped through the ice and snow to free my car, but didn't drive anywhere and have otherwise stayed inside. I'm likely to do the same tomorrow and the list of office, store and even highway closures being announced on the news indicates that many others will be doing the same.

This is the most snow Portland has gotten at one time in quite some time, perhaps near a decade. After enduring four snow-less Portland winters I am simply thrilled. 

This is also the first year in the past eight that Jim Gallagher and I have not lived in the same city. We had developed a theory during those basically snow-less years in Indiana, Colorado, and Oregon, that one of the two of us was bad luck. But since Jim is in South Bend this year, and there is cold and snow there as well, it simply must be that the two of us can't be in the same place for it to snow. Alert the Farmers' Almanac: next winter will be mild for northern Indiana ;)