what is this white stuff?!?

[monkeymd2b]

Holy crapola! It snowed here in Portland! I drove to work yesterday as it started to fall and the road was a little slick. Thankfully they cancelled clinic yesterday so I didn't have to drive in it until today since I was on call last night and just stayed at the hospital. I locked my keys in my trunk when I grabbed my window de icer yesterday to brush some of the snow off (about 4 inches) the car. Sigh. So AAA came and helped me out with that one. My stupid PDA has rebelled on me and isn't working right. At least my call night was easy. It's amazing how many people were in the ER though. One pregnant patient walked to our hospital with contractions...I sent her home cause she wasn't in labor. After one admission, the intern and I took our cafeteria trays and went sliding down the hill behind the hospital a few times. Then we made snow angels by the loading dock and made a little snowman on the outside table. We wore a couple of layers of scrubs to keep us semi warm and dry. It was pretty fun...then we went back to work. Today before I left the hospital, Brad, from the engineering dept at our hospital, put the chains on my car. The Les Schwab guy lied to me. They weren't easy at all to put on! Or at least the guy seemed to have issues putting them on. I'm sure I pissed off all the people driving since I have no clue how fast one can drive with chains so I went 20-25 on the big roads that had been de-iced and 5-10 on the less travelled roads. The only place I really needed them was in our hospital parking lot and my street and steep driveway. Anyway, tomorrow will be icey so I'm keeping them on. I'm too afraid to take them off. This is what happens when you grow up in hawaii...you just don't learn how to drive in snow and ice. I think I may make a sign to put in my rear window that says, "Very Slow Driver... I'm from Hawaii so back off but curse me all you want!" The people in our program who are used to way more snow than this have been teasing me endlessly.

I'm sure many of you B.com folks are laughing at how pathetic we appear on the news, if they're showing footage of portland in your area. Well, I need to sleep so I can control any panic attacks that may come one as I prepare to drive down my hilly road to work. There's supposed to be a C-section tomorrow...we'll see if the person shows up.

[OperaTenor]

This is some pretty amazing video taken in Portland I was treated to on another forum.

http://www.nwcn.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?vidId=114054

[barfle]

The weather here in deecee has been absolutely wierd. Over the weekend, it hit the seventies, and this morning it was 19 on my deck. My brass monkey is now singing soprano.

[Trumpetmaster]

We're at about 32 degrees here in Augusta today..
Getting Sleet.... This will make the drive out later this morning
very interesting....

It was 75 a couple of days ago.....

[jamiebk]

I am sure that Shapley will agree that this is all due to global warming....NOT

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Yesterday evening, when I took the trash down to the dumpster, Ming-tu Paperbiter Pintoes managed to escape through the door into the breezeway. He made it about four yards down the hall before he realized that it was COLD out there, and he turned his little kitty tail right around and bolted for the door. Easiest cat-catch I ever made. Sadly, I still had to be out for long enough to evict the trash.

I am NOT going to enjoy the power bill, when it comes. Everyone dealing with actual white stuff has my extreme sympathy (my sister reports a glacier in her yard in Aurora).

[Haggis@wk]

Yesterday evening, when I took the trash down to the dumpster, Ming-tu Paperbiter Pintoes managed to escape through the door into the breezeway. He made it about four yards down the hall before he realized that it was COLD out there, and he turned his little kitty tail right around and bolted for the door. Easiest cat-catch I ever made. Sadly, I still had to be out for long enough to evict the trash.

I am NOT going to enjoy the power bill, when it comes. Everyone dealing with actual white stuff has my extreme sympathy (my sister reports a glacier in her yard in Aurora).

the real cause of your pain in the L.A./Sandy Eggo area is that Al Gore has been shortlisted for an Oscar. Al just can't catch a break.

the Urban Dictionary:

Gore Effect

The well documented phenomenon that leads to very low, unseasonal temperatures, driving rain, hail, snow or all of the above whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global "warming". Hence the "Gore Effect."

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Is there any chance Al Gore would like to pay my power bill?

[piqaboo]

I went to Portland once, for a weekend.
It froze and snowed then too. Ice floes in the Columbia River, frozen waterfalls along its banks, and a black-ice slick in parking lots and roads. Even walking was a challenge.
Driving, for a So Cal gal, was a terror.

[Shapley]

[edit]


Sorry. I meant to stick this in the 'Environment' thread

V/R
Shapley

[BigJon]

http://www.nwcn.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?vidId=114054

Wow! Don't people in Portland buy snow tires? Or at least all season tires? That is just unbelievably bad tire performance.

[dai bread]

This weather even made it to my paper.

Apparently Haggis was out sweeping ice off the runways at DFW airport.

[shostakovich]

I watched the Portland video. Yikes!!! It looked like gravity was at work, and the surfaces were nearly ice. Only nearly, because some people could walk on it. It was unbelieveable. I wonder how much the videographer made on it.
Shos

[monkeymd2b]

I can't watch that for some reason. It keeps crashing my browser. Is it the one where the cars are sliding down the hill in the West Hills of Portland? Since the white stuff rarely sticks here, most folks don't use snow tires. One of our docs lives in Hood River so he does have studded tires. I took the chains off after I got to work since the weather got warm enough to melt most of the snow and ice today. My road wasn't too bad tonight.
There's still lots of snow in my yard though and I'm such a dork because I feel the need to eat a bit of it whenever I go out there. It reminds me of shaved ice, one of my favorite treats when I was growing up in Hawaii. Don't worry, I'm not eating it off the road.

I delivered 2 babies today. One was a c-section (I did the assist so I cut half the stuff open and closed half the uterus and other layers of the body). The other was one of my patients. She had a breech baby but on monday we flipped her baby around...I guess that helped irritate her uterus enough to put her into labor. She had a tiny baby so once the head delivered, the kid flew out at me. No epidural. She kind of had no choice. She wanted an epidural free delivery but by the time she asked for it, she had gone from 7 to 9 cm in 30 minutes (gotta love it when rupturing the bag o water accelerates labor). She did really great though for a first time mom. She swore like a sailor...made me laugh.

[OperaTenor]

Hi MMDUB,

Congrats on the deliveries. Always nice when they're healthy, right?

Yes, I think it's the same video. I couldn't believe the bumper car activity, but even more, I couldn't believe people were standing around in the road watching. I mean, how fast could they get out of the way if one started slding their way?

[barfle]

It makes you wish you had a body shop in Portland. I can't believe that people were able to walk on a surface where the cars couldn't sit still. I wonder how the fire truck fared.

[BigJon]

There's still lots of snow in my yard though and I'm such a dork because I feel the need to eat a bit of it whenever I go out there. It reminds me of shaved ice, one of my favorite treats when I was growing up in Hawaii.

You'll go snow-blind!

Don't worry, I'm not eating it off the road.

Watch out where the Huskies go
Don't you eat that yellow snow . . .

She did really great though for a first time mom. She swore like a sailor...made me laugh.

If kids could only see what their moms suffered to have them . . .

[Schmeelkie]

Think we're up over 25 inches in the past two weeks - this is close to our normal Jan snowfall. But we only got about 4.5 before that, so we're still woefully behind on totals (should be up around 50 in by now).

we had some icing on the 15th - that's pretty much when winter started here. funny thing - I went into work to pick up stuff to work from home the next day (temps in low 20s, light snow, high winds) with baby Bella and everyone was surprised I came in. I said, this is nothing, the roads are fine. then on my way back to the car I get a call from my husband - he had driven into a ditch. He and Pumpkin were OK, but the car would have to be towed. Saw 5 other cars off the road that day. since then I've driven in a couple of whiteouts and on roads from wet and salty to snowcovered with just tracks....just par for the course in Rochester. All-weather tires and ABS brakes are a necessity here.

Weather channel predicted 5-8 inches today - think it missed us. winds still mostly out of the west, so no snow off lake ontario for us. The wind's got to be fierce to get snow from Erie.

[barfle]

DeeCee got their first snowfall of the winter a week ago Sunday night. I remember the weather forecaster on TV saying that there would be snow, but not so much that junior didn't have to finish his book report. Schools here seem to have "snow days" if someone says the word out loud most of the time. It ended up being about three inches at my house, which had melted by Thursday.

But we've had temps in the teens, with wind chills down to colder than a witch's welldigger. I tried to get the bus driver to head for Sandy Eggo this morning, but he went to the blue line instead.

[Schmeelkie]

Well, we went from being way behind to above average. Think we're around 80-90 inches for the season. Of course, we've had warm weather for the last week and it's almost all gone. Got rain last night, so flood watches for today. Supposed to get more snow and cold over the weekend, but it's just the last hurrah - won't stick much and it'll start being consistently warmer soon.

Looks like some of my crocuses are peeking up! Spring's only 5 days away!