Twenty years ago, when I was in middle school, we had an epic snowstorm (by Willamette Valley standards) that dumped a foot of snow in a day and closed school for a week. It was great—at least until we had to add extra days at the end of the school year to make up for the days we lost.

Since then we’ve had an inch here or there, and a couple ice events, but nothing that ever compared to the legendary snow of my childhood. A week ago, nature saw fit to challenge its record.

Eight inches of dry snow fell early last Friday, which were the opening salvo in a week of sub-freezing high temperatures. One night we had a low of something like 1℉, which was the coldest low we’ve had in forty years.

The roads have been a complete mess, schools have been closed, and kids have been sledding down my hill all week. UPS spent a week tagging my packages with “snow delay” scans instead of actually delivering them. (The FedEx guy actually parked at the base of my hill and walked the rest of the way to deliver his packages.) Oregon State closed for Monday of Finals Week, that’s how bad things were around here.

Marin and I went for a walk in the snow last Friday, and thus a small collection of photos of objects with snow hats was born:

I’ve telecommuted to work a bit (the one saving grace has been that we never lost power), and rode the busses in on Wednesday… Major intersections were still messy as heck, five days after the snow fell, which was pretty galling. On the other hand, I also learned that the bus service out to my area (which is comparatively in the sticks) is a bit better than when I checked a year ago.

We finally started thawing out late yesterday afternoon, and while there’s still snow on my road I can at least now see some pavement again. Good thing, too; I’m starting to run a bit low on (non-emergency) food.