Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Freak January Snow, Pretty, but damaging….

Well, we had a weird bit of weather here.  For the first time in the two years I’ve lived here on Sauvie Island, this is the first time we’ve ever gotten snow. 

The biggest irony is, when I left work that evening, which was at a higher elevation, there was only rain there, but by the time I got home to the island, two inches of snow had already fallen.

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I thought it was rather beautiful, a nice change from the never ending pattern of grey and brown that is Oregon nine months out of the year.

Since I still had my Christmas lights up, I turned them back on again to snap a few snow pictures.

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I used my tripod and an extended exposure for all of the pictures, absolutely no flash was used at all. 

By the time I was done, the snow had stopped and I thought, “well looks like we’re good for the night.”

I, like several other people, got a little caught off guard.

My patio room, the next morning….

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I got off cheapest, my patio room only cost me a $100 to replace, however, eight different rigs in the park had their rather bigger and more expensive permanently mounted awnings collapse under the snow load that night.

Apparently, some time after I went to bed, the sky opened up and dumped roughly six inches of “Colorado Concrete” on us, that nice extra wet and heavy stuff. 

Several people got trapped in their RVs for a while as their awnings collapsed down against their doors.   I ended up having to mark off from work that day to both replace my patio room before the rapid melt off and oncoming rain that was in the forecast hit, as well as help neighbors get their awnings up enough to get their doors open.

My love of snow has been somewhat tamped down after this, next time, I’ll remember to get up once an hour to sweep the snow off the patio room roof with a broom.

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