Print  email 

Late-year snow creates perfect storm of memories

By Chester Allen | The Olympian • Published December 22, 2008

• Comments (0)

in South Sound. On Dec. 22. And it's still falling.

Could it be a white Christmas this year?

All this weather reminds me of my first South Sound holiday season — way back in 1996.

I was the new guy in The Olympian's newsroom, so I got to cover what passed for news on a balmy Christmas Day.

Parents watched their kids play on the slides at Capitol Lake, cyclists pedaled by in shorts and I watched cutthroat trout rise to blue wing olive mayflies on our own Deschutes River.

It was the warmest Christmas since I moved to the Northwest in 1986.

But the weather report was ominous, and there was a steely tint to the western sky.

On the night of Dec. 26 — even as people packed stores for after-Christmas sales — freezing rain started to coat everything.

Alder trees bowed under an ever-growing layer of ice in my neighborhood. I heard cracking booms — like the report of a 12-gauge shotgun — as the trees broke at the trunks.

Strobe flashes of electricity — they looked like lightning — lit the dark sky in my Tumwater Hill neighborhood as power lines fell and transformers blew. The acrid scent of ozone filled the cold air.

I woke up at dawn and looked out the window.

The world was gleaming in ice — and falling apart.

I headed to the newsroom and didn't really stop working until Jan. 2.

During the next week, South Sound endured an ice storm, snow, rain — which soaked snow-burdened roofs at marinas and caused boathouses to collapse onto yachts.

Most people didn't have electricity.

Power crews got a lot of people reconnected — and then a big wind storm blew into town and knocked down even more lines. I'm pretty sure it snowed and rained again — but it all ran together in my mind.

The kids didn't seem to mind all the weather chaos. They went about the important business of wringing out as much fun as possible from the snow and ice.

Every hill was a sledder's delight. Kids slid on cardboard ice surfboards — and savored parents hanging around the house and an extra-long winter vacation.