Let it Snow, Let It Snow...Oh, NOOO!!

This past Monday was President's Day. A lot of people had the day off.  I did too, though I never used to (except during my school years). I never really missed having it off, either. But now that I do get every third Monday in February off, I can't imagine not having it off. It's a good thing, having a three-day break during the doldrums of winter. In fact, I vote for one three day weekend every month.

The mercury climbed into the mid 50's on Monday, too, so not only was it nice being off work but nice outdoors, too. And today, still a week before March, it's 72 degrees. But it’s been a fairly mild winter throughout most of the country. Uh-oh; run for your life, it must be… climate change!!

 

We’re blessed though; all things considered winters in this part of the world are pretty tame.

Still, days like this make me wish it could be like spring in February all the time; especially when I recall what it was like here over Presidents Day weekend back in 1990. It wasn’t like spring that weekend. That was the weekend our little hometown was literally snowed under.


Nestled in the rolling Sierra Nevada foothills about 50 miles northeast of Sacramento, Grass Valley sits at around 2500 feet in elevation or, as the Chamber of Commerce likes to brag, just right- above the tulle fog of the Central Valley and below the Sierra snow line. And most of the time, that's true; the big winter storms coming off the Pacific generally remain rain events, and when the Valley is socked in it’s sunny and warm here.

 

And we’re not totally immune from the cold realities of winter. If the conditions are just right we’ll pick up an occasional snowfall, on the receiving end of anything from a dusting to a few inches. But when that happens, the effects are generally benign and short lived. Here today, gone (melted) tomorrow. But the Presidents Day Weekend storm of February 16-17, 1990 was a completely different story.

 

That weekend Grass Valley was buried under nearly 3 feet of snow. In the yard outside the house I lived in near downtown, I measured 34 inches.

 

I’d lived in some cold and snowy places before, including North Idaho, Spokane and Lake Tahoe, all areas prone to harsh and fairly significant snowstorms. But I’d never seen that much snow fall and accumulate in such a relatively compact space of time. In less than 24 hours, the 2-day storm left behind almost 3 feet of snow. At the 2500 foot level, or just above downtown, Grass Valley was submerged under 30 inches of Sierra cement. There was even snow down to the Central Valley floor.

 

Naturally, way up at Donner Summit, the massive storm delivered an even bigger punch than in Grass Valley. But for them, it was just another heavy high country snowfall. They’re used to it, prepared for it, know how to handle it. Life goes on. And for the kids in Sacramento, the dusting was a fun anomaly. But for us, the Presidents Day Weekend storm pretty much brought Grass Valley and Nevada City to a standstill. The area was almost completely shut down.

But some of the lower elevations in the foothills were hit even harder. Though the snowfall was less in Alta Sierra- at 2000 feet and ten miles south of downtown- than in the city, the nearly two feet of heavy wet snow was enough to bring down most of the power lines, as well as hundreds of trees. Many roads were impassable and the electricity was out for almost a week. Fortunately I didn't live in Alta Sierra in 1990, as I do now. If I had, after six days of darkness, I would've probably been ready to punch someone out. Also fortunately, back at the house in town at Pleasant and Walsh Streets where I was living, except for about 8 hours on the first day, the lights remained on.

Yet it seemed so strange to even be in the middle of a huge snowstorm because, just 5 days before, like today, it felt almost like spring.



On Sunday, it'd been in the 60's under a bright warm sun. Monday night, however, brought a dramatic shift in the weather pattern. A continental arctic high pressure system moved in, sending the warm air sprinting south towards Mexico and leaving behind a deep Yukon chill. Ninety nine out of a hundred times, though, this bubble of frigid air would slide down over the Rockies Mountains and spread east. This time though, it regressed westward instead and stopped directly over Northern California. From a high of 64 on Sunday, by Tuesday it only got to 39; a 25 degree loss in 48 hours.

 

Unusual? Not necessarily. It was, after all, still winter. We’d seen cold snaps before.

 

But all that cold dry Arctic air was on a collision course with a big juicy Pacific storm, the type that, under normal conditions, would usually drop a lot of rain. However, instead of pushing the entrenched cold air mass ahead of it and out of the way, the Pacific warm front was just going to slide over the top. Meaning all the moisture wrapped up in it could do nothing but come down as snow.  The confluence of these two wildly conflicting air masses was now almost guaranteed to fire off a major winter storm for the record books. Unless we could somehow nudge our half of the state closer to the lower half, by Friday morning western Nevada County was forecast to be ground zero.

Most were hoping the weather people were wrong, but this time they got it right. 

 

Thursday night brought an increase in clouds and wind and after a quiet start, the sky had grown dark gray and angry looking by mid-morning.  I was working at Grass Valley's KNCO and in the middle of my midday air shift when the front barreled into the foothills. The opening salvo came at 11:55, as the first flurries began descending outside the radio station. But there was no rain to snow transition, or flakes not sticking either. It all came down as snow, and quickly increased in intensity, from a flurry to a dumping.

At 12:15, the ground was completely white. At 12:25, towards the end of Paul Harvey's 15 minute News and Commentary, the electricity failed at the radio station, stopping 'ol Paul in mid-sentence and leaving us incapable of broadcasting. Just when people needed us most. It was dark all over the place, from East Main Street to the Brunswick area, Penn Valley to Nevada City and all points in between. The phones didn’t even work. Less than an hour later, the lights had gone out on nearly all of KNCO’s listening area, and by 2:00, with nothing to do and no electricity, nearly all KNCO employees had vacated our dark and cold workplace to brave the roads and attempt to get home. By then the snow was coming down around a couple inches an hour.

Greg Leis and I were the last two standing, answering the few calls coming in on cell phones (we had one for emergency crews to reach us), while we waited for the power to be restored. But even if the normal landlines did work, or Greg or I could get on the air, there wasn't much we could tell anyone. PG & E didn’t know when the lights would be back on, Pac Bell didn’t know when normal phone service would be restored, Caltrans didn’t know when all of the main roads would be cleared (side streets were being ignored altogether, and the weather service wasn’t promising any sort of break for another 12 hours. With the building completely in the dark, so were we.

Throughout the afternoon and evening, Greg and I continued manning the fort, with flashlights the only source of illumination, and the clothes we wore to work that day the only source of warmth. So far, though, with absolutely nothing to do and no way to broadcast, this emergency wasn’t living up its billing- it was kind of boring. Cold, dark and boring. Around 7:00, I was getting hungry, too, and offered to go out and fetch food. But (duh) not a single fast food place or convenience store was open. Nothing was open.

However, Greg said there was no reason for me to hang around. Sure, the electricity might come back on; but that could be in an hour or not until Saturday. I wanted to stay, too, but with no creature comforts and nothing to do but sit in the dark and listen to our stomachs rumble I took Greg up on his offer to hold down the fort and trudged out into the still falling snow to make my run for home. However, travel was still darn near impossible.

 

Even with a 4 wheel drive, the combination of slick, hilly streets buried under thick, wet piles of snow was too much for my Toyota 4x4. Three blocks from home, I managed to get it high centered and had to abandon it where it stopped. It would be going nowhere without a tow and a winch. Normally my "commute" from KNCO (such as it was) was about ten minutes. But that night, due to   roads clogged with snow, traffic and other abandoned vehicles besides mine, and having to hoof it part of the way, it took close to an hour. But miraculously, by the time I got in my front door (about 8:15) the electricity was back on- and so was KNCO. 

 

Normally we signed off at midnight, but not during a local emergency. And this blast of winter definitely qualified as a local emergency. Greg remained on the air all night until other staff members could begin filtering back in to help. That wasn’t until around daybreak on Saturday. So he put in a l-o-n-g day. And I felt guilty for not going back Friday night to help him out. But with my truck still stuck on Church Street, I had no wheels. Eventually I did, but not until Jay Cooper arrived Saturday morning to help un-stuck my truck. 

The snow did finally stop, but not completely until about 4:00 Saturday afternoon. But with lights and manpower and a full air staff, including yours truly, we were able to remain on the air and provide 24/7 coverage. On Saturday, still feeling as if I’d shirked my duty by leaving Greg alone, I pulled a 12 hour day. I helped answer phones, gather information for whoever was on the air, and pulled a 5p to 9p air shift myself, then stuck around another hour and a half answering phones again. Sunday I slacked off and was only there 10 hours. I didn't do an air shift, but anchored a few news updates and did some more internal office leg work.

 

But the long days I put in that weekend were hardly unique. Everybody on staff pitched in and did extra hours and air shifts until the crisis was behind us-or at least more manageable. That's what we did. That's what made working at KNCO so special- we were all in it together. Everybody pitched in. We liked to think of ourselves as a family. The community’s family too; we closed ranks like a family and worked though the problem- in this case, a crippling snow storm. Working inside the calming conduit of information during those stressful times, at KNCO, it’s just what we did.

 
But back to the Presidents Day Weekend storm of 1990. Though it's always referred to that way, not a drop of precipitation actually fell on Presidents Day. Mother Nature's worst was unleashed on Friday, February 16th and Saturday the 17th. By Sunday the 18th, though church services all over town were cancelled, the sky had begun to clear and things were improving. And on President's Day, Monday the 19th, the sun was shining brightly enough to start melting the mounds of snow the plows had pushed and started stacking up in parking lots and along the sides the major thoroughfares. The side streets didn't even see a plow till Sunday morning, but by then the area was slowly coming back to life.

They called that 1990 storm, "The Storm of the Century." But that was last century. Now that we're into the Twenty-First, we're probably due for another one. Hopefully I'll have moved or be dead by then. But due to our geography, elevation and temperate climate, the odds of a repeat of Presidents Day 1990 are not very high. Though that one was a whopper, we're much more likely to have a President's Day like this past Monday- partly cloudy and 55- than what smacked us around 22 years ago. But you just never know. 

 

El Nino and La Nina winters come and go in cycles and, as much as I'd like it to be, 72 degrees isn't the norm for February. Just check the record book. Today is February 23. It was sunny and spring like. But just one year ago, on February 23, 2011, Grass Valley was about to be raked by a ferocious winter storm that brought almost three inches of rain below 2100 feet  and over a foot of snow above it.

 

That meant Amy and I- at our current home in Alta Sierra- didn’t have to dig out from under another intense, but rare, Nevada County snow storm. However, if we’d still been living back in town, in the old house at Pleasant and Walsh Streets, we would have. If you don’t live here that probably sounds confusing, but the distance between Grass Valley and Alta Sierra, though only about ten miles also features a 500 foot drop in elevation. Our house is even lower, in a relative "banana belt" at 1800 feet.

 

So, last year on this date when it was snowing in Grass Valley, it was raining at home in Alta Sierra. Actually it was snowing in Alta Sierra, too- but at the upper or north end. It missed us by  about 3 miles, or just a few minutes’ drive time. But any near miss will never make me unhappy. I can go a whole winter without seeing a single flake of snow and be perfectly content. As they say, better wet than white.

However, some experts still want to point to global warming- or climate change- as the reason for all these year-to-year spikes and dips in climate. And to a small degree, they might be right. There’s definitely more cars, people and pollution on the planet than 30 years ago- when these same ‘experts’ warned of the coming New Ice Age.  Whoops; guess that didn’t happen, either.

 

And perhaps I’m just a simple guy, maybe too simple. But to avoid falling for the smart people’s sometimes well-intended, but more often, agenda-driven confusion, when I look out the window to see if it’s raining, snowing or windy, and go outside to feel if it’s cold, warm or hot, I’m content to believe that all those variables can be chalked to the normal ebb and flow of natural weather patterns.

 

Ya know; the kind of stuff that's been going on, oh, since about the dawn of time.