22 Inches In 70 Year Snowfall

We were snowed in for several days over the weekend, with Cat lamenting that she didn’t buy an earth/snow moving blade for her tractor-mower. Then, after reaching a total of 22 inches of snow– the most I’ve EVER seen on the valley floor in the Pacific Northwest (the previous record for me being 18 inches in east Portland that kept many snowed in for almost 2 weeks back in 2008)– we lost power during “the Great Melt.” We also got a leak in the roof between the Victorian part of the house and the older lodge part. (Cat was supposed to get flashing for that crease, but put it off.) We also had a tree come down across the driveway– but Cat took a chainsaw to that sucker and cleared it off herself!

So–! Adventurous!

It was very pretty, and we were indeed well prepared. When the melt came– that’s when our entire area lost power for a day. Luckily, I thought ahead by filling bathtubs with water so we could flush our toilets when the well pump no longer fed the system! And– I had instant meals we could cook with hot water of our woodstove, even though our gas stove still worked just fine.

I realized that, despite the amount of time I spend on my own laptop, ipad, and ipod– Cat and Tess are both far more dependent on electronic distraction than I am! Tess literally spent most of her time in bed, trying to sleep away the boredom. Cat moaned a lot and I finally started to read her budgeting book with her aloud, the two of us trading turns, just to while away the time as productively as we could.

I actually felt okay with it all, and thought of it as a good way to discover what our weak points are for longer term disasters or outages. Cat owns a generator, for instance, but wants to get a secondary power panel put in to run with it (I didn’t even know that was a thing until I saw what they had all set up at Ghost Lake.) She also realized that she has to pay attention when experts tell her to fix something as “your number one priority.”

Overall, though, I would count it as a lovely impromptu vacation. We went outside just to walk around and admire the scenery, play with the cats, and laugh at the chickens (who were obviously miserable, but fine.) I just didn’t see the short-term inconvenience as a real hardship. Granted, I didn’t have to get to work, but I mean mentally I was cheerful and kept busy. Cat and Tess seemed more lost. Maybe it was dealing with all the times I’ve had my electric turned off due to lack of payment growing up, but I could easily shrug off a day without power. It’s rather weird to me that my roomies were so thrown off. So I suppose I can feel grateful that a little prior adversity did indeed bolster my coping skills for such things. I used that to keep the roomies focused and stable, and in the end– all was well.

Today, our neighbor Jonah (that I pushed Cat to meet with me last summer) came over with his versatile mini-tractor and plowed our long driveway completely! Cat was reluctant to ask for help, but since we’ve met the family and know they had the equipment… She finally got the guts to ask, and it wasn’t a problem. She offered him something in return, but he wouldn’t hear of it (you could tell he was enjoying playing with his big toy, though!) And once more, a lesson I’ve been pushing came home and Cat could see befriending neighbors is crucial to prolonged success.

For our next roomie meeting, Cat wants us to do a “readiness assessment” to see where we can improve our resilience for any more “shelter-in-place” type situations, and I’m totally on board with that.