The snow just won't go away ...

... no matter how much Duncan would like for it to disappear! I took this photo on his morning walk on New Year's Eve.

Not that he walked up onto this pile of snow in a parking lot across the street. I wanted a photo of him in/with/on the snow, so I set him on a small shelf made from some of that ice from the week before, imbedded in the pile when it had been shoved up into what the weatherpeople and/or reporters kept calling a snow berm. Not to worry, Duncan stood still for a few seconds, I snapped the photo, and picked up the little guy, giving him a great big hug of thanks!

I really thought I'd taken my last snow photo--ha!

Mama and I had never even thought about going out on New Year's Eve. I mean I'd made it through all of that snow and ice without any health disasters, and she hadn't been outside at all. Why would we take a chance? Why would we want the car over here in the land of scarce parking? We happily saw in the New Year with Dick Clark, wished each other "Happy New Year!" and went to bed.

At some point on New Year's Eve, it started to rain, I can't remember exactly when. When I woke up on New Year's Day, it continued to rain.

Then on New Year's night, we sat up playing cards first, Hand and Foot, then Scrabble. About 11 p.m. I got up from the game to take Duncan out which certainly didn't interest him. The rain continued to pour down, striking the sidewalk and splattering higher than he is tall. (Somewhere in there, a new 24-hour rainfall record for Portland had been set, 3.04 inches of rain in 24 hours; the monthly January average is 5.07 inches! It was announced on the 5 p.m. news on Jan. 2. I remember saying, "If it had been colder, we'd sure have a lot of snow!") Anyway, I had to walk out into the rain with him and set him beneath the hedge where he managed part of his business, then turned around and low-tailed it for the front door. Or should I say, tail-tucked it? You get the picture--he wasn't happy. Neither was I, dripping from the top of my hood to the tips of my sleeves. We dried him off and put him in his covers in Mama's recliner and went back to Scrabble, after I announced to Mama that it felt much colder than it earlier in the day.


We play on the kitchen table, and I sit beside the window. I can't help myself, I'm constantly looking out, especially when it's been raining, just to check the streetlight to see if it continues to come down. Some time in the next hour or so, I noticed something startling. I could barely make it out, through the sweating window, but I swear I thought I saw snow on the cars, sidewalks and street. Now, the weather report had mentioned the possiblity of snow showers, not sticking on the valley floor. We are a couple hundred feet above sea level here, so we're not smack dab on the valley floor. But. I pulled my "throw up the sash to see what was the matter" routine again, shocked out the wahzoo when I saw the snow in the streetlight and all over the place! Out came the camera, as well as my utter disbelief at what I was seeing. It was almost 1 a.m., and I kept thinking, "Well, I'm glad we didn't go to bed early or we'd have missed this!"

This is not rain, it's snow. I took the photo without the flash.

This is one with the flash. See the numerous flakes, some quite large?


I kept looking out the window, without opening it every time. Mama kept saying, "Look out the window when it's not your turn!"


We got to the end of that game--I can't remember who won--and I announced I was going to try taking Duncan out again. I thought maybe the snow would not bother him as much as the rain had. He made it just fine, thank goodness. I took him back in and went out again to take some more photos. I didn't see anyone else--it was so quiet that I could hear the ice mixed in the snow hitting my hood.

In the foreground, left, that's the snow berm I posed Duncan on for the first photo in today's post.


Gee, this looks lonely, doesn't it?


And a few minutes later, here's a better shot of Duncan's snow berm.


I was getting cold, so I took one more photo in the parking lot, of this pole with a shelf welded to it. You get a good feel for just how much snow had fallen in about an hour.


This street dead ends into our street, straight across from the parking lot--by the way, it's not a parking lot where you can rent a spot all day and night--it's for a business building, but you can rent a spot for the night which is of absolutely no help to us. That's Burnside at the top of the hill, where the service station lights shine in the darkness.


Here's our street. The streetlight on the right in the distance is the one I photograph from our kitchen window.


I like this shot of the intersection from a living room window.


By 2:45 a.m., it had started to rain again, and I soon went to bed, wondering what it would look like in the morning and saying to myself, "Thank goodness I'm not working on Friday!"