An Unexpected Birthday Present
Published at 19:19 on 9 February 2014
It’s been a mostly disappointing winter due to a general lack of storms and a near-complete lack of snow. On the subject of the latter, I’m glad I don’t live someplace like New England or the Northern Rockies where the snow can drag on for months and there’s a near-interminable season of lingering and very slowly melting dirty snow which often takes up a good chunk of the spring. But I do like to see at least some fall every winter (so I’m glad I don’t live in coastal California).
This past week has been particularly frustrating because it’s been cold enough to snow but storm after storm has gone south and missed us. Portland and Eugene have been getting dumped on, but nothing more than a flurry or two here. Yesterday the forecast was for another chance of flurries with this time maybe a half-inch managing to dust the ground by the next morning in the most favored spots. Portland, of course, was forecast to get yet another big snow-and-ice storm.
So I assumed it was going to be another bust, bundled up, and took my dry-weather bike on the ferry for a long day in the city (first coffee with friends then a meeting). The latter dragged on past dark, and it started to look as if the leaves on the laurel hedge out the window were turning whitish. Hmmm… yup, everything was dusted in white already, and it was only 6:30PM. A few hours later, it looked like this:
Nope, not going to ride a bike in that, particularly my dry-weather bike without knobby tires or fenders, and with a bottle generator prone to slip and cause the light to go out if the tire sidewall gets wet or icy.
By today, my birthday, it was all over, but the morning did dawn with a nice snowy scene:
Not an epic snowstorm by any means, but far better than last winter’s disappointing performance, and the fact that it was only a few inches (and that the temperature is starting to moderate) let the arterial streets melt clear by mid-afternoon.