Snowpocalypse 2021
For the first time in recent years, they didn’t call it a snowpocalypse. They should have. (Not really.)
It started snowing (just a little bit) on Thursday the 11th. The forecast called for quite a bit more precipitation over the weekend.
In 2016–a year that shall live in infamy–we bought this house. We moved into it at the end of November, and the literal weekend that we did so, a ice storm swept through the gorge.
It knocked out power for us for three days.
For unrelated reasons our shower was non-functional (once we could drive again, we started showering at my office) and we hadn’t had time to unpack anything. The house is heated by gas, but it requires electricity to power the fans, so it didn’t work with the power out. We had no other way of heating the house, so we spent a lot of time huddled under blankets, trading the chance to sit in our single functional chair.
Also, far away in California, Marina’s mom died.
Understandably it gave us some feelings about winter storms.
The snow picked up through Friday and Saturday, and by Sunday things had changed.
On Saturday our power went out–at 2am.
I remember waking up as it did, the sudden silence apparently something my brain perceived as danger.
Originally, the estimate from PGE was that it might not be back on until Monday, so I did as much of my morning routine as I could with power–which mostly amount to putting on warm clothes and walking the dogs. Fortunately, the estimate turned out to be overly-cautious: Our power was back on by 10am, and the very first thing I did with that sweet sweet electricity was make coffee.
On Sunday I took the dogs for their walk and learned two things:
- I’m pretty out of shape
- Walking in snow is hard
I walked about the length of our short block, and by the time I got back to the house I was literally wheezing and completely out of breath. Normally I take the dogs for a brisk walk that’s between a block or two and almost a mile in length without much trouble, but something about having to plow through 12"+ of snow kicked my ass.
It didn’t help that to try and keep my face from freezing I’d pulled my scarf up over my mouth and nose, which impeded my breathing and fogged up my glasses, so I couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe. Not my favorite part of the weekend.
On Monday, things began to warm up.
Sunday night temperatures had edged up from the mid/high-20s to right around freezing, but on Monday they rallied and began a slow climb all the way up to the mid-40s.
Late Sunday everything started to develop a layer of ice (if flat) or an incredible forest of icicles (if it could drip) or was simply encased in ice (if suspended). On Monday, icicles started to drip, and ice started to soften.
To accompany the warmer temperatures, and drive away some of the gloom that had accumulated over the weekend, Monday started things out with bright sun and beautiful skies. I ran outside several times during the day just to take photos because everything seemed so pretty.
As I write this, the snow hasn’t fully melted–although it’s gotten clear enough for me to drive around a bit. It’ll probably be another day, or two, before things are back to “normal.”
This is probably the most actual snow I’ve seen since moving to Portland in 2014, but at least for us it hasn’t been as bad as previous years.
That “for us” is a big caveat though: This was a very cold storm, and even with new insulation we got last year, the house still got cold. Some folks have it much worse–east county didn’t open any warming shelters this year, potentially because of Covid, but potentially also for a myriad of other (probably depressing) reasons. I’m happy we have it as good as we do, but I’m very aware that we are extremely fortunate.
