2012 severe weather alert

Being a beachy desert girl my description of our winter in the Pacific Northwest is cold and beautiful. 

When you live in a 5th wheel trailer, you pay attention to the weather and in particular the severe weather alerts. Last winter we left the coastline of Texas sooner than we wanted to because of "possible tornado" warnings. Now that we're in a stick built house I find myself not knowing the weather forecast every day.

So it was a bit of a surprise to look up weather.com on January 14 and see severe weather alerts for Goldendale. Dick was as excited as a NY Giant cheer leader. Many of the roads on the outskirts of town have signs saying "impassible in winter". Ours is a private road so there is no sign but there are neighbors warnings. So we prepared to be snowed in for a week or more. We went to town and stocked up on food supplies, filling our new pantry to over-flowing. Sure enough, the night of January 16 it started snowing and didn't stop for 24 hours. Eighteen inches of snow later, we were snowed in. The good news is that our entrapment lasted only 3 days thanks to my fearless husband and our 4 wheel drive Dodge pickup.

The winter wonderland continues. It's going to take a bunch of warm sunny days or pouring rain days to melt this much snow. I miss the desert. I miss the ability to take off walking just about anytime you want in any direction you want. I am however enjoying the beauty and stillness that exists here in our world of white. And absolutely delighted that our friend Owlie is here sharing it with us.

Mount Hood has been busy building it's winter coat of snow. We haven't seen much of it making the appearances even more special.

Even if we did want to be in the desert for the rest of the winter, there's no escape now. The warming up and a couple nights of rain have turned the 4 wheel track into a slushy beautiful mess. It is truly beautiful.

a couple of journal entries

I'm sitting here thinking about southwest places. I dug out our daily journals and got warm by reading a couple of days from our past winter adventures. I'm sharing them with you and wishing you warmth and happy memories :)

Saturday, Day 1,847

January 13, 2007

Vicksburg, AZ

Last year we enjoyed a mild Arizona winter with most days around 70 degrees or above.  This winter is more typical weather with temperatures closer to the typical 60s in the daytime and 40s at night.  But not now.  A record-breaking cold wave covers half the country, including Arizona.  When we woke up this morning, our Weather Center said its 24 degrees outside.  With a steady north wind, it’s brutal outside especially for the desert.  I’ll bet the little kit fox who visits us every night thinks so too.  If we could, we’d bring him inside Emoh and brush his coat and then let him sleep between us.  We’d do that for the hummingbird that’s been at our feeder too, but the fox would probably eat it.  

A couple days ago we realized we might get out of the cold by taking our trailer house to San Diego.  Online we located a state park beach where we could camp by the ocean.  We made reservations starting Monday.  It’ll be fun, but for now we’re just hanging on, trying to stay warm and burning propane at an alarming rate.

Wednesday, Day 1,851

January 17, 2007

San Diego, CA

Silver Strand State Beach is south of Coronado and is one of the few public beaches to offer ocean-front camping.  Donna expertly navigates us into the campground, which is actually just a paved parking lot facing the ocean.  There is a faucet where we can get fresh water, but that’s about it in the way of campground amenities.  No power, no picnic tables, no dump station, and the campsites are just a row of back-in parking spaces.  But what it lacks in services is more than made up for by the view.  Out Emoh’s back and side windows is a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean with downtown San Diego on one end and Tijuana, Mexico on the other end.  The water is tropical turquoise with white surf breaking on the broad sand beach.  After two months in the desert, this is quite a change.

today

glorious. today was. glorious.