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I’m used to cold, rainy early springs, but I can’t remember witnessing the kind of weather that was hurled at us in the past week. A recap:

Friday, March 16: After a lot of rain this week, I drive in afternoon sunshine to Eugene Airport for a flight to the Bay Area to visit relatives. When I walk out on the tarmac to board from the back of the Allegiant Airlines Jet, it is raining again. … I arrive Oakland to more rain. An hour and 14 BART stops later, I’m in Millbrae, where the rain is now torrential — far worse than anything I’ve seen in Oregon since the January floods. I normally walk from the Millbrae BART station to my mother’s house in Millbrae. This time it’s a no-brainer. I take the first taxi I see. It comes to $6.40 for the 1.1-mile, 3-minute journey.

Saturday, March 17: The flood warnings in the Bay Area have been lifted, and it has stopped raining. But it’s cold and will stay that way until Monday morning.

Monday, March 19:Back on BART, I get off at the Balboa station in San Francisco to transfer to another BART train that goes to Oakland. It’s normally cold and windy at Balboa, but on this day the clouds have cleared and it’s warm. I have four minutes until the train arrives, so I peel off my sweatshirt and soak

up the sun.

It must be at least 60 degrees, and it sure feels good.

Tuesday, March 20It’s just before midnight and I’m heading home in a downpour to Albany from the Gazette-Times in Corvallis. If this keeps up, we’ll be writing flood stories on Wednesday.
Wednesday, March 21I wake up at 6:40 a.m. when my wife Nancy comes in the room to announce that there’s snow outside. “SNOW!” I said in disbelief. “I didn’t see any forecast for snow.” (Of course I didn’t look at the forecast. I was doing video at the Beavers’ WNIT game the night before, and wasn’t paying attention to the forecast.) … I immediately sit down at my iMac and pretty much stay put for the next four hours, listing school closures, crashes and doing weather updates. Shortly before 9 a.m., I walk outside to take the photo of Nancy (above) in the snow. She is about to walk to work and is enjoying the snow. “It’s the New England in me,” she says. “It’s kind of fun.”
About 12 hours later, as I finish shooting video after the Oregon State’s season-ending loss to Washington State in the CBI semifinals, the announcer warns people to drive carefully. It’s still snowing outside and hasn’t stopped all day. I snap a photo outside Gill Coliseum, then head back to my truck for a slow ride to the Gazette-Times office. As I wrap up at the G-T about 12:30 a.m., News Editor Paul Davies gets a call from sports writer/copy editor Aaron Yost advising us not to drive home. Aaron has just driven home a few miles from the GT and had a tough ride on the heavy snow on neighborhood streets. Paul lives a few blocks from me in west Albany.
I don’t want to spend the night on the lunchroom armchair, so I head out slowly. I make it over the Van Buren Street Bridge, and drive 20-25 miles an hour in the right lane of Highway 34. Usually, I take Oakville Road into Albany, but I follow Paul’s advice of taking Highway 99E this time. Good advice. Everything is going well until, near Beta Drive and the Target Distribution Center, I start fishtailing. Fortunately, no one is in the southbound lanes because that’s where I finally regain control before nearly hitting the curb. I get back in the northbound lanes and make it home with no more near misses. The drive has taken 45 minutes. It’s 1 a.m.
Thursday, March 22I’m up at 5 a.m. posting another round of school closures. The schools that say they’re going to have 2-hour delayed starts finally put up the white flag and change their status to “closed for the day.” I go outside and snap a photo of the driveway where the roof of Nancy’s Ford Taurus has accumulated 7 inches of snow since Wednesday. At 9 a.m. the sun is out, and people are making snowmen and playing in Takena Park. Among them is Jen Rouse and her family. Jen is a former DH reporter who now freelances for us. My neighbor Debbi Richards is throwing her lab Hank one of his toys. He has a hard time finding it in the snow. I stay long enough to video Hank and toss the toy about 25 yards.
Friday, March 23I get home at 5:30 and it’s beautiful. The sun is out and most of the thick snow has melted. “Nancy,” I need to get another photo of you outside.” I snap the photo, then we spend a few minutes looking at some of the plants that suffered worse than others. The daffodils had a hard time, but it didn’t help that I stepped on a few of them as I took Nancy’s picture.
What a week!

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