Oregon is thawing out slowly. My town has warmed up past freezing so the snow and ice are melting. Most of the streets are clear, or just slush. Half or more of the snow on the lawn has melted. Offices, businesses, etc are getting back to normal. I'm not sure if the local school was open today or not, but I did not see or hear the kids going past my house this morning, so probably school was closed.
Portland is a day or so behind my town. A lot of the downtown is starting to thaw today. But the roads are still snow-ice covered, and slick. One freeway was almost a parking lot for 3 hours because of a huge truck that got stuck. Only one lane of traffic could get by it -- on a three lane freeway.
The freeway going through the Columbia River Gorge still has freezing rain falling,
and high winds. It was closed for two days, then opened for 8 hours yesterday for vehicles with tire chains only. It just opened again today, again with tire chains required. They are stopping all traffic and inspecting the chains to see that they are properly attached. The 60 miles through the mountain gorge is horrendous.
The airport had some planes starting to fly out today -- since being closed down on Monday because of ice. Some people had been camping in the terminal since Monday night. Yesterday, the airlines were bussing people to Seattle to catch planes there. The Trail Blazers team went by bus to Eugene, and flew out of there to get to their game yesterday or today, after having the home game cancelled on Tuesday. The visiting team got stuck in Portland for several days. Haven't heard how they got back home.
Many schools in the Portland area ended up with 4 -5 days of school closed because of the ice. There are broken water pipes everywhere, and some collapsed roofs -- one on a Fred Meyer department store. Other buildings have been evacuated because of sagging roofs, waiting for inspections. There's one huge airliner at the airport that has it's nose in the air and is sitting on the tail. They figure that the ice on the front melted off, and the weight of the ice on the tail tipped in down in the back. The TV station was wondering why no one was doing something about it -- and found out that all the workers were stuck in traffic trying to get to the airport. That was this morning, so maybe by now they have restored the plane to it's proper stance.
Yesterday, there were 58,000 people out of power in the Portland area due to broken tree limbs falling on power lines. The ice is so thick (an inch or more) that the trees cannot hold up the weight. One TV station is Portland had 24 hr coverage of the storm since Monday. They went back to normal programming just a couple hours ago, but still have hourly updates. Many weather records were set during the past few days.
I got to the grocery store today for the first time this week. We weren't out of food, but were getting very low on fresh foods and bread. I'm very glad I got the snow tires mounted last Friday so I had little problem getting DH to work and back, and doing vital chores.
I have relatives in Portland right near the opening of the Gorge where the worst of the winds and ice have been. They didn't try to leave the house all week. They are looking at Sunday-Monday for melting. My 86-yr-old aunt needs to drive to Pendleton -- 200 miles down that Gorge. Pendleton is still 24 degrees and has not started to thaw. It had temps down near zero this week. It will be several days before the warmer weather makes its way that far and the road is free of ice so my aunt feels safe driving. Meanwhile her Christmas visit is being greatly extended.
There's another weather front coming in, but it's from the south so should be just warm (sort of) rain. We will be back to the more normal type of winter weather this area has.
Life is now returning to normal. Tonight is opening night of the community theater play "Rainmaker". Monday night is Newberg lace meeting. I just got papers from my accountant for filing taxes. Laundry is waiting, as well as some dishes. So I guess I'd better get back to being a homemaker. However, I did make two lace hearts during this freeze. I'm looking at some empty pillows and thinking about what to put on them.......time to browse some books, I guess.
Happy lacing, Alice in Oregon -- thawing out.
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