Snow Day

Snow days are very common this year as the Midwest and eastern half of the United States have had a record number of recording setting winter storms, dropping snow and temperatures beyond what many have seen in their lifetimes.  So titling this blog snow day is not novel or unique unless you live in the Northwest where the weather has been springlike and abnormally dry this winter.  Until this week.

The weather forecast was for some snow starting about midweek which it did.  There were two fingers of snow coming in from the Pacific, one north of us and one south of us.  We watched TV and both wondered what all the fuss was about and why we were so blessed.  Thursday we went to a couple university basketball games (WOU won both the women's and men's games) with just a inch of snow on the ground.  Coming out of the game we drove through about three inches of fresh powder with some concern about getting up the hill to our place.  We made it.

Friday only I drove to Monmouth for some Skype interviews for our new pastor at the church.  After watching it snow throughout the interviews by the time I drove home there were a couple more inches. Conditions were essentially white-out except for the weeds in the ditches.  Again we held our breaths until I slowly with a steady pedal made it up the hill.  It snowed through the evening so when I shoveled out the walkway this morning, I put a tape in the snow.  It measured a bit over 13 inches, the most we have seen in Oregon in our 19 years here.

Thinking there would still be a funeral at 2:00 this afternoon, I got out the tractor and pushed some snow aside.  After a half hour and viewing the main roadway, I decided it was impractical to try to get to town for any reason.  That was moments before Gail walked up behind me and said that everything was cancelled. With the tractor back in the barn and me in the house, we have resolved to join the rest of northwestern Oregon and just stay home.  There is a time to acknowledge defeat or at least when one should choose not to fight the weather.

Now the snow continues outside the window before me as I let my fingers do the walking and thinking and my hope is that the weatherman who is forecasting rain and warmer weather is a couple days is correct.  There are things to do beyond the end of the driveway, but for now it's time to rewarm the hot chocolate.