First we had the succession of five winter storms, complete with a three-day blizzard, that kept all of us in the Pacific Northwest snowbound for ten days during December. That was unusual, even for the Columbia Gorge, where the winter weather can get a bit wild.
We had a few days' respite -- several days of rainy and unseasonably warm weather, reaching into the upper 50s F -- which melted all of that snow and allowed me to get my car up the steep driveway and park in my garage for the first time in three weeks. It also caused tremendous flooding and landslides all over Washington State and parts of northwest Oregon.
Now come the winds. There is a huge high pressure area that's been sitting over the Pacific Northwest for days, creating an inversion layer of stagnant air to the east of where I live. Since the barometric pressure to the west is much lower, the pressure differential is drawing air through the Gorge from east to west at extremely high speeds. That's not unusual in and of itself, but the length of time it's gone on is.
Here in the Western Gorge, we've been battered by gale force winds non-stop for four days. (We don't have the air stagnancy problem here, needless to say.) Since the temps are just above freezing, that gives us a wind chill factor below zero. The winds are so strong they kept blowing down the chimney and forcing the damper open. After a while, I gave up trying to keep it closed. (There's a glass door to the fireplace that keeps most of the cold air out of the house.) Where I am, on the bank of the river on the floor of the valley, I can hear the surges of wind barreling down through the Gorge, echoing off the cliffs, long before they get here.
In some ways, this is worse than a hurricane, in which you have maybe 12 hours of high sustained winds and then the system moves on through. Having to listen to the wind roaring for days, and not being able to get out and about, wears on you after a while.
It could be worse ... there's no precipitation. If it had been snowing while this was going on, we'd have eight feet of snow piled up by now.
As with the blizzard last month, it's been interesting to observe my response. I go through moments of being irritated because "it shouldn't be doing this for so long", as if there's someone doing it on purpose just to be ornery. Then I remind myself to relax and let it be what it is ... and let all of the old, stale air be blown away, making room for clean, new, fresh air, in which we can breathe deeply and freely once again.
There is nothing that compares with the freshness of winter air. A friend told me last week that she loves January because the days are getting longer and we are closer to spring. That's saying something in Maine, where we had 15+ inches of snow on Sunday.
Posted by: Sharon | Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 08:05 PM