More snow!

It's official! We've broken snow records! There are 14.5 inches of snow at the airport as of today, which is the most December snow since 1965 or something like that. It's also the most snowfall at one time since 1980. Obviously this means there has never been this kind of snow in MY lifetime. It's been very impressive and we're not out of it yet. I think we are done with any real accumulation on the valley floor but it's not supposed to get much above freezing tomorrow so it's going to be a slow thaw. The roads are ice, snow, ice, snow piled onto each other, and there is just no way for the plows to keep up with this.
Rick had to work Saturday, but they closed early. He chained up in the evening to get home, and later decided to take Rocco out...

You can see how hard it was snowing, and how brightly Rocco's crazy eyes glow!

It was so cold I had enough after just a few minutes. That East wind is brutal!

You can see Rick is about calf deep here Saturday night in our front yard.

Here he is in our backyard which is trapped by the fence and hasn't blown around as much. Now it looks like a sandbox of snow back there, it's crazy! These footprints from Saturday night are completely filled now by Monday.

Sunday morning we woke up to about 3/4 of an inch of solid ice on top of everything thanks to some freezing rain over night. Yuck! It made the snow a really weird consistency and you could peel the sheets of ice off the top.
Rick outside with a chunk of ice off his car

They closed Rick's store thankfully, but I had tickets to see the Nutcracker with my Aunt and the crazy Oregon Ballet Theatre did not cancel it! Rick was nice enough to haul me downtown with the chains on for the performance. He watched a little football and waited for me. The roads were do-able yesterday with chains for sure. By the time we got back it was not as easy. With over a foot of snow it didn't leave much clearance under the Scion and our neighborhood streets were hard to navigate. We saw all sorts of idiots driving on I-5 with no chains on! There is no way! The roads are just solid packed snow, you can't see the lanes or anything. Luckily traffic was very light. The nice thing about the Nutcracker was how empty it was, and we could sit anywhere we wanted. The costumes and dancing were wonderful, but sadly, they don't have a live orchestra anymore (budget cuts) so it was just canned music.
Here is our driveway when we returned home from downtown, Sunday about 3:30pm, and it was snowing again!

Me in the front yard, standing on a little stone ledge we have, and the snow comes to the top of my boots!

Rick took this one of our cars this morning. My car hasn't gone anywhere for DAYS! In fact I have only bought ONE tank of gas all MONTH! it's a miracle. I normally (with work and school) get gas about 8 times a month!

You can see we have some drifts, but amazingly our stone walls are almost covered!

This morning Rick had to open the store at 10am and he had employees saying even with chains on 26 they were slipping and sliding. It will be interesting to see how busy they end up today. And because they were closed yesterday, they're extending the store's hours till 8pm instead of 6 on Christmas Eve, which I think is insane. Luckily Rick won't have to close, but I feel for those who are!
It's amazing to think Christmas Eve is the day after tomorrow! I have all sorts of baking to do, but can't get to the store, so I am waiting for Rick to get home tonight. Hopefully the roads will be somewhat better by then, so we can get to Salem Wednesday evening, and Damascus Thursday morning. What a wild storm this has been!
Hopefully you are all warm and not going stir crazy (like me). Enjoy it while it lasts!!