Tuesday, January 16, 2007

More Snow!!

Okay - so today, after defrosting the car (only 5 minutes) I drive to work at 7:50. I have Connor with me as usual. As we're passing the high school, I have little hail stones or freezing rain hitting my windshield. The short bus comes for Connor and he gets on and they leave.

Just a little while later, it starts to snow. It's now about 8:30. It starts snowing even more, and by the time we are unloading kids from busses at 8:45, we have a coat of snow over the parking lot. The flakes are pretty big and all the cars are getting covered. And it's cold!

By 9:30, we are finding out what the school will be doing (as in closing or early release or what) because the snow is not letting up at all. We hear back that school will stay in session, because there's a "warming trend" expected around 10:30. We go online and are looking at I-5 in Portland and it's totally covered in snow. Warming trend - right.
So 10:30 comes & goes with a LOT more snow. Now the school people are meeting to decide what to do. We are already short any staff that live in higher elevations, or even just 11 miles north of us! Eventually we hear they are going to close the schools. Elementary will let out at 1:30, and High School at 1:00.

So now we (staff) are thinking - it was pretty obvious to us what was happening. Were they just keeping schools open because after 11:00, we don't have to make up a snow day? All this time we're looking out the window and hearing sirens as accidents happen all around town. People are coming to pick up their kids, telling us about all the spin-outs, and near misses they've seen. I'm thinking - I'm on a HILL.

So, because I'm not sure the older kids' bus will be in time for them to get home to get Connor off of his bus, I leave work at 1:00 (instead of 2:00). As I'm driving, it's not really that bad on the main road - just really slushy. However, as soon as I'm off that, it's all compact snow and slush and icy bits. My van is doing fine, but people around me are sliding here & there. I opt to go down Douglas from the court house, even tho I have to go over a hill, because I see they've put down gravel in the road. And then I catch up to Trevor & Diana's bus. I turn onto our street and stop to let them in the van. I was actually able to drive up the compact snow on our street pretty well. Lee was already home, which was a surprise. I could have stayed later at work if he could have gotten thru on the phone, but all the lines were busy with kids having to call & have someone be home to pick them up. Plus, Boys & Girls Club was closed, where a lot of them go after school. Lee had been released at Dell just a bit before lunch.

The top photo is Lee walking Connor up the hill. The bus couldn't make it up to the house to drop him off. I walked with Diana on her paper route, which was fine in hiking boots & wool socks. When we got home, she made another snow fox. The second photo is where she's tackling Trevor's crooked snowman (he made a better one later). The last photo is Liberty giving Diana a kiss. Liberty loves the snow. She has that double coat, and she snuffles around and rolls in it. Kooky dog.

The "warming trend" showed up while we were out front doing these photos. At 4:00, the sky clouded over and it dropped about 15 degrees again. The whole street is icy now. I'm not driving down that! I'm expecting a delayed start to school tomorrow, at the least!

1 comment:

Robert van de Walle said...

T,

You make it all sound very adventerous! Wonderful.