Praying for Winter Storms
Winter storms on the West Coast pack good with bad. In Oregon, where two years of insufficient rain have emptied reservoirs and fueled wildfires, we entered this winter praying for weather: rain in the valleys and heavy snow in the mountains with its promise of spring and summer melt.
November, December, and January—typically the wettest months here contributing 9 of the annual 20-inch rain total—failed to deliver.
My younger East Coast brother, who would have become a meteorologist if it weren’t for the family math genes, sent me monthly drought reports and kept track of reservoir levels across Oregon. The January 2019 U.S. Drought Monitor showed that 55 percent of the state faced extreme drought. For the sixth time in the last decade, snow pack levels in Oregon mountains were running well below normal.
“All it takes is one or two big storms to move the needle,” my brother reassured me.
The storm we’d been waiting for, bad and good, arrived the day Tony and I were to drive to Portland for my second eye surgery. Actually, rain and snow had accompanied our drive to Portland for the first surgery, a month earlier. Then, friends had advised us to leave the day before. “You don’t want to be on the mountain passes with a parade of stuck trailer trucks,” Kathy said. “It’s not pretty.” We took our own counsel. The storm was mostly bluster and the five-hour drive north was wet but uneventful.
This time, the morning news advised travelers to carry blankets, water, and food. In this era of hyperbolic pre-storm coverage, Tony and I have become under-reactors. We headed north at noon, expecting to arrive in Portland for a fancy dinner before the next morning’s cornea transplant. We had two days’ worth of clothes, but no emergency gear.
I should explain the route. The distance from Ashland to Portland is 285 miles due north. Ashland is 20 miles north of Oregon’s border with California and Portland hugs the border with Washington State. Interstate 5 connects the two, a small section of the I-5 corridor that stretches from Mexico to Canada and carries the Far West’s truck traffic.
On February 25th, it was grey and rainy when we turned onto I-5 North and traversed the Rogue Valley, up through Grants Pass. The temperature hovered around 33 degrees.
An hour and a quarter north of Ashland, I-5’s three lanes squeezed into two and we began the small but sinuous ascent through the Siskiyou Mountains. The rain had turned to wet snow, and the traffic, mostly trucks, began to crawl. Kathy had it right: tractor trailers and curving, slippery roads are a nasty mix. Minutes later, a highway crew with orange vests appeared in the middle of the road and motioned us off the freeway to a place called Canyonville, whose main amenities included The Seven Feathers Casino and a small café.
There was no explanation. We searched for a detour but finally concluded that I-5 had been closed. We pulled into one of Canyonville’s few gas stations and asked, “What gives?” “It’s a mystery to me,” the attendant said, “they hardly ever shut down the Interstate for snow.”
We joined the similarly stranded at Oregon Sunshine Espresso and traded guesses on what was going on. Newcomers brought fresh bulletins about road closures across the region. A burly man with snow boots reported that I-5 North would be closed until midnight. It was now 2:30 pm.
Tony and I considered the options, but there was really only one: to head back to Ashland and try again to reach Portland the next morning, leaving before dawn. My surgery was scheduled for 11 am.
By then, I-5 South was also closed, but Google Maps showed a route down a two-lane state highway to the east of the Interstate. “Don’t ever follow Siri onto back roads in this neck of the woods,” we’d heard. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” On the verge of losing our minds, we went with Siri.
For two hours, we followed the Tiller Creek Highway through the Umpqua National Forest, virtually alone on the barely plowed two-lane road. To our right, the South Umpqua River rushed by, swallowing trees in its path. To our left, water cascaded down steep slopes and waterfalls sprouted. Ahead, the cloaked shadows of Douglas Firs haunted the horizon. We passed the lumber hamlet of Tiller, whose post office, school, a half-dozen houses, and variety store looked long abandoned. (We later learned that the entire town had been bought and recently auctioned off for $3.85 million to create “a tree-laden river resort.”)
It took us another hour to cross the Rogue Valley back to Ashland.
Starved, we grabbed dinner and set our alarm for 3 a.m. We needn’t have, of course, because adrenaline from the day’s travails left us sleepless. Google Maps still indicated trouble where our path had been stopped the day before, but we set off, hoping for the best. This time, we had blankets, water, and food. Sleet spattered our windshield, but the road conditions seemed manageable. We proceeded into the night.
When we made it past Canyonville where our trip had ended the day before, Tony and I sighed with relief. But ten miles later, traffic stopped. A stream of tractor trailers and a handful of private vehicles stretched as far as we could see, their brake lights punctuating the dark. This time there was no exit and, out of cell phone range, no news. We turned off the engine, pulled out the blankets, stared at the snow, and waited. I prepared myself for not making my surgery appointment and the events that would trigger.
An hour and a half later, still pre-sunrise, engines started up and we began to move. We passed the previous day’s devastation. Abandoned cars and trucks littered either side of the Interstate. (How did their occupants find shelter in this remote landscape?) The fallen trees that blocked the road had succumbed to power saws throughout the night. The driving conditions remained precarious—dark, foggy, and slippery.
For the tractor trailers, the reprieve was short lived. Trucks without tire chains (which was just about all of them) were ordered to the side, and for the next ten miles idling trucks crowded the right lane, three hundred or more.
The sun broke as we entered the expansive and usually verdant Willamette Valley, now covered with a foot of snow. “Brilliant is an understatement,” Tony said. When we asked Siri, “Starbucks near me” (we had left Ashland coffee-less) she led us to a store in Eugene that at 8 a.m. was still closed, waiting for snow plows.
We arrived at Portland’s Good Samaritan Hospital just in time for me to check-in and disrobe.
“Can you kindly knock me out?” I asked the pre-op nurse.
The following week when Tony and I drove back to Portland for my post-op visit, the weather was kind and bright. On our way home, we stopped for fresh tacos and beer in Eugene, with crocuses, not snow, in sight.
I began this post saying that in the drought-stricken West Coast, winter storms pack good with bad. Late February’s record-breaking rain and snowfall did move the needle as my brother promised: as of early March, Oregon’s extreme drought percentage had dropped from 60 to 26. Snowpack in some areas was 200 percent above normal. The three reservoirs that serve Ashland were respectively 18 percent, 28 percent, and 58 percent full.
Still, summer wildfires and smoke never leave the mind here. Winter is fire preparation season in the Rogue Valley, with controlled burns restoring “resiliency” to nearby forests. Yesterday, a burn in the woods behind our neighborhood sent plumes of white smoke into the crisp blue sky.
Note: Today, climate strikes by students across the globe draw thousands to the streets in cities from Ashland to Sydney, Berlin to Kampala.
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