Snow in Spokane

This is a picture of my car outside my house from early January. Can you see it? Yes indeed, we have had a lot of snow. In the end, it was over six feet total in 20 days' time. And then it started to rain. Joy. Though the rain did help wash the snow away. The snow's still here, but at least now I can see my car from my house (well, most of it).

The first 36 hours of snow were the craziest. That's when we got the first two feet. Yes, yes. Two feet of snow in 36 hours, that nobody had forecasted. It just kept snowing and snowing... On the 2nd day, I had to go to my office to get my computer, so I decided to try to drive. My little car was willing, but not able. I figured if I could just get to the tire ruts in my street that the SUVs had made (you know, the grown-up cars), then we'd be fine. I dug my way to the ruts, drove ten feet, landed in them, gunned the engine, lurched forward.... And froze in place, stranded on the top of a snow berm, my little car earnestly trying to touch back down into the ruts, to no avail. I got out, dug under the car, got back in, spun the air with my wheels, got back out, dug under the car, got back in, spun the air with my wheels.... for two hours. Yes, it was a fun day. Though I did laugh a lot. And then my neighbor tied a rope to one of my axles and pulled my car backwards off the berm with his truck. My other neighbor let me park in front of his house for the next few days. I traveled 15 feet in two hours. It was quite the accomplishment.

I was better off than a lot of people, as the weeks progressed. Reports came in about all the men (okay, "people," but you know they were all men) who came to the emergency rooms with broken legs, having fallen off their roofs while up there trying to shovel off snow. (In their defense, at least 50 roofs have collapsed all around the county because of all this snow.) There also were two incidents of two different "people" (men again) threatening snow removal plow drivers with guns. (Who would be mad to see a snow removal plow?) As one police officer said as he tried to calm people down, “Remember, when July comes we will all be laughing about those crazy days in December. Try not to reflect on those days from your shared cell at the Spokane County Jail." And then it snowed again. And again. A woman wrote to the newspaper with a grammar question: "Is it 'I snowblowed,' all day yesterday, or 'I snowblew' all day yesterday?" She then answered her own question. "It doesn't really matter. I'll just go with, 'I am snowblowing every day.'"
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And then there were the animals. They couldn't find food, so they started to come to town. A moose crashed his way into someone's basement bedroom through the window. It took animal control a few hours to get him out. Apparently the moose left "presents" in the bedroom in the meantime. Poor guy. He must have been terrified.

And there have been many, many
deer, even in the more urban areas like mine. In fact, I had a deer here. I was sitting on my couch in the living room and suddenly, from around the corner of my house, there she was - staring at me. In an instant she had turned, trotted down my somewhat-shoveled walk, crossed the street, and disappeared. It happened so fast, I had no time to take her picture. I took a photo of her footprints instead. I hope she found some food.