Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Snowmageddon 2012


As we went to sleep last night, the weather service mentioned that there was an outside chance, if everything lined up perfectly, that we could have a large snow accumulation overnight. Well, since these things never line up perfectly here, I assumed the snow would be a non-event. How wrong I was! I woke up a little after six to a winter wonderland. Everything was covered in white and it was still snowing hard. Then at 6:30 AM the power went out. Oh no!


It snowed hard until 11:00 AM and we ended up with over 7" of very wet, heavy snow. There were trees down everywhere and it was a bit of a challenge getting to work. But with 4-wheel drive, and going in a different route, I was only an hour late. The poor Plum trees took it especially hard. They had just flowered out and the extra surface area, combined with their naturally brittle structure, caused them to snap and split. One the bright side, the world did look beautiful all covered in a thick layer of snow. It is just so unusual for us to receive this much snow and this late in the year. Happy 2nd day of Spring!


Everywhere you looked all morning the snow was piling up by the hour.




The wet snow caused the fencing around my kitchen garden to collapse. Fortunately, it will be a fairly easy repair and the snow covered up all of the edibles. There are garlic and peas planted in there somewhere!


Parvati spent the morning in the top of her cat tower watching all of the bird action outside the kitchen nook window.


Even in the heavy snowfall the feeders were filled with the smaller birds. The big suprise - we saw the first Violet-green Swallow of the year fly by during the storm. It must be wondering why it returned so early to Oregon!


This pretty Robin rested on top of the birdbath.


And the female Hairy Woodpecker stopped by the peanut feeder during the snowfall. She didn't seem too upset by the storm.

As the day progressed it became apparent that we won't be getting our power back on any time soon. As dusk fell we lit a fire and settled in for a long, cold night. However, you can see that the cats grabbed all the best seats before the humans could!


*authors note- this post was published on Saturday, March 24th after the power came back on after 3 days and 2 hours!

2 comments:

Lady Farmer said...

Wow! That is just crazy! I think the groundhog must have come outside twice on Groundhog day making us have Winter for 12 more weeks instead of 6!
Our cats do the same thing with the fire (that is how we heat our home). We rarely get to sit on our new couch ~ the cats are always there!
Hope all is well, you stayed warm and had no more trouble with driving!

Robin said...

I have been so busy, I didn't get to read your posts. Oh that darn Mother Nature!! I'm happy to hear all is well and you have power once again. The life of a cat! I think I want to be a cat in my next life!!