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.