Snowpocalypse turned out to be a pretty accurate description of yesterday's weather debacle. As I mentioned yesterday, we got some snow. The particular area that I live in only saw a couple inches. This was enough to completely shut down the greater Portland metropolitan area. As I also mentioned, the city and surrounding area isn't really equipped to deal this sort of weather calamity. Now why they can't be prepared for an event that usually happens at least once a year and has the effect of shutting down the city? I have no idea. I will give props for the area I live in for at least having gravel out on the roads early this morning. That made for a less treacherous commute. Last night, a LOT of people weren't so lucky.
I have one co-worker who's commute lasted seven hours last night. Seven. Hours. And he left before the majority of people did. People were taking screen shots of the maps of the highways showing the speed of traffic and which highways were closed. The pictures looked like well vascularized organs there were so many lines of red. Most major highways were closed. People were having to abandon their vehicles because it was quicker to walk to where they needed to be or they were about to run out of gas from going no where. One of the managers at work wasn't getting very far from work and ended up parking his car and walking back to the center so that he could just spend the night in his office. The whole situation was insane. And this isn't the first time that we've seen things get this bad either. This kind of highway shutdown and massive gridlock happened a few years ago. Obviously no one learned from that joyous experience.
I was fortunate that my commute was generally in the opposite direction that most people were going. Instead of it taking me 15 min. to get home, it took me 30. I really couldn't complain. And thankfully the truck is operational and insured, so I opted for driving it yesterday. I got home while it was still light out and was excited to see what the dogs thought of the accumulation. Mostly, they were excited to get outside. Since they have been so cooped up lately, I thought it would be a good idea to walk them over to a field near the house to let them burn off some energy. I'm REALLY glad that I did because they REALLY needed it! Here's a video of some of our Snowpocalypse fun!
Happy December 15th!
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