George Rebane

There’re only a couple of parts of this winter wonderland that folks here in the Sierra foothills are wondering about today – when’s the damn snow gonna stop, and when’s power coming back on?

I can just see the grins on the faces of certain RR readers living in parts south and southeast.  Yeah, well wait until the hurricanes come and the earthquake shakes your eyeteeth loose.

Yesterday afternoon started out quietly enough with a light snowfall that didn’t promise to be much.  But looking at the usual weather guesser sites, those people were saying to us ‘just you wait ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait!’  We didn’t have long to wait.  Curled up in bed last night with our books, puppy dog bedded down in her nest, heater blasting out warm air, a little Debussy in the background, perfect setting for a cold winter’s night.  Correctemundo, until 2215 sharp when the world turned black.  (Oh, that’s 10:15PM PST for you civilians.)

But what the heck, I had run the generator earlier in the day, Jo Ann had all the kerosene lamps and candles in their usual places, and the fireplace was still merrily dancing in the front room.  So we decided to turn in early.  I set the alarm for 3am so I could start the generator to let us pump some water from the well to keep any pipes from freezing in the well house, and to have the house heat up to a low thermostat setting.

At about 1am the lights went on and the world came alive again – you know the drill, in our office every printer, computer, UPS, phone system, … went through its start up sequence.  The happy sound of whirring, buzzing, and clicking as all the gizmos rejoined the land of the living.  Yay! that was a short one we thought.  Not so fast, in less than five minutes all went dead again.  And the same drill was repeated just before 3am, after which I went outside into some very deep drifts that the wind had sculpted around the house to switch on our dependable Kohler 12K watter.  I had to push back some serious snow that almost covered the entire machine before I could open the door behind which was the switch.  Never had that problem before.

This morning we surveyed what could be seen from the windows and porches, and both decided that this was the biggest snowfall since we moved here in 2002.  And the wind was still blowing and more snow falling.  We got about 18 inches with drifts in the 3 to 4 foot range, you can see that the regular 10ft basketball rim doesn’t quite look that high.   The radio said that the white stuff wafted way down to 1,000 feet, so this will be a storm to remember.  I’m waiting for some of that global warming to save the day since all the cold in recent years and this winter is just “weather” and has nothing to do with climate change.  OK, then where do I sign up for that warmer weather?  Meanwhile my pal Russ Steele keeps mumbling about something called the Dalton Minimum.

They’re telling us that the snow will stop later in the day, and after a cold night we are promised sunshine tomorrow.  And the power coming back on? fuggedahboutit.