Pacific Views

as the portland member of pacific views, i have to say that the weather here really sucks. it reminds me of a wretched march in minnesota -- and i moved to oregon to get away from that sort of weather.

today was the first time i got out of the house since monday. there was just too much ice around to venture out on tuesday & wednesday and, living on a side street, may street hadn't been plowed. (i think a city plow finally went down the block earlier this evening.) and since almost nobody here has snow shovels, you can forget about using a sidewalk anywere except a business district. a trip downtown to get breakfast took over an hour by bus, light rail & foot. usually, it's a 10 minute drive.

and mary's comment about the airport is somewhat misleading -- there really haven't been any flights out of PDX since tuesday. we have a friend from minnesota who was supposed to fly back tuesday afternoon. supposedly she'll be able to leave on saturday but, given how the week's gone so far, she isn't holding her breath waiting ...

having lived in minnesota for 10 years, i realize that six inches of snow & a few days of sub-freezing weather isn't a big deal in a lot of the US. but in a place like portland, where that kind of weather happens only once a decade or so, the city just isn't prepared to handle it in the same way as one where this kind of weather is routine. even so, i'll have to say that i was impressed by how fast trimet (the local transit district) got its buses and trains running again. for those of us whose cars won't be going anywhere until the real thaw, trimet has been a godsend.

Magpie -- I'm very glad to hear you from you. I should have remembered that the corvid species should come through this storm well. I'm with you -- I'd much rather not live in that stuff.....

you know what's kinda shocking? to hear Oregonians complaining about winter weather. Toughen up!

I grew up in NY, hardly the most wintry climate in the US, and this just makes me laugh at you. I mean, if you had to deal with storms like this more than once every few years, you'd have a right to complain.

hey, i spent 10 years in minneapolis, so i have some idea of what bad winter weather is like. try getting into your car at 4:30 am to go do a radio show when the temp is -32 F (without the windchill).

living in upstate NY (or minnesota), you have an advantage over a place like portland: the crappy winter weather happens often enough that your city or town is prepared to deal with it. here, where this kind of weather happens about once a decade, the infrastructure & emergency services aren't built to handle it. in minneapolis, the 6-8 inches of snow & couple of days of freezing rain (like we just got in portland) would merely have slowed things down a bit -- not brought the region to a halt ... but that's because minneapolis is geared to handle many such storms during a year. the only time i ever saw the twin cities groan under the weight of a storm was the 28-inch halloween storm in the early 90s.

if we want to play 'my weather is worse than yours', i remember that when i moved here in 1996, it rained every day for the first 6 weeks i was here. yeah, there were a few peeks of sun during those weeks, but the dominant mode was gray, cold, and wet. i wonder how well people from a drier climate deal with long stretches of rainy weather that oregonians take as normal.

i guess it all goes back to the fact that we all deal best with the bad weather that we're used to.