WINTER of 2008
Hi Everyone, ~ Index Site: Winter 2008 Index ~
Well, where shall I start?? Ok, I'll start at the end first. My Blog or Web site, 'Winter_2008' came about after thinking that since we were hit so hard this year and I wanted to share my story and pictures with others, maybe there were other people around Weaverville that had their own story/pictures that they might like sharing too. So I wrote our local newspaper, The Trinity Journal, about my idea and Amy said that sounded like a good idea to her and put a little 'blurb' in a couple of issues in April asking for some input from others. So far I've only had 2 people to respond, but will go ahead and add their words/pictures with mine, so anyone can view and hopefully enjoy them too.
Now let's get back to the beginning. I've lived up here in the mountains of Weaverville, since September of 1976 and I can only remember 2 other times that we've had a winter this bad. Kathy my wife has lived here since 1982 and she can only remember 1 other time that we've had a winter this bad. Town is about 2,000' elevation, we are about 2,800' elevation and about eye level with Oregon Summit at 2,813' elevation. We can view the lower part of The Trinity Alps which are about 5,000' to over 7,000' elevation, so when winter snows start we can usually see 3-4 snowfalls up in the higher elevation, which each next snow storm getting lower and lower till it gets down to our level. But this winter the first time it snowed we got it too!!
So that was our first warning that this winter was going to be different. Then over the coming weeks, it would snow a few inches like from an inch or so, to 12" to 18" or more. I would shovel the snow off our deck and start clearing the snow away from the walk way, from all around our car and then starting at the rear of the car, work my way down our steep driveway to the road, Oregon Street, trying to keep our driveway open. Normally this would only take me a few hours and it would stay open till the next heavy snowfall. In the meantime, I'd chain up our car, so I could get to town for shopping or prescriptions, post office, bank, etc.
This winter, I'd start the shoveling and only get about 1/4 of our driveway cleared on any one day and then wake up the next morning to find everything covered with more snow!! So I'd then shovel the SAME area again and maybe make it to about 1/3 of our driveway cleared and then more snow that night and have to start all over again!! All of this was before the heavy snowfalls started coming in!! ;-)) By now we'd been unable to get either my car or truck out of the driveway, even chained up, so I had to call my good buddy, Johnny Brinson, to come up with his 4x4 truck and take me to town for much needed supplies, eh!!
The County was keeping Oregon Street open so Johnny had no problem driving the 3 miles up here from 'Main Street', so I waded thru 42'' of snow from our house to the roadway to be picked up. Then when we got back home and unloaded all of my stuff, I didn't want to make more than just 1 trip back up to the house, so I had everything in stong plastic bags thinking ahead of time, and just loaded a couple bag handles on each arm and then grabbed the other bags by their handles with both hands and basically dragged them on top of the snow, little by little, till I got them inside, eh!! BTW, I could hardly use my arms the next day, because of all the strain on them. But if I hadn't of had that 42" of snow to drag the bags on, I probably wouldn't have been able to actually 'carry' all those bags in only one trip either!! ;-))
Then as the weeks went on with more & more snow falling, I finally called our County Road Crew and asked if there was anyway at all that the next time they came up to clear more snow off the roadway, that they could also remove the berm at our driveway too (NOT normally done!!), because my wife is 'handicapped' and should I need to get her to the doctor's office or hospital at any given time OR in worse case having the ambulance come up to get her, I really needed my driveway open. I did have about 3/4 of our driveway open at this time. The next morning when they were back up here clearing more snow off the roadway and I was out in the back of our house, clearing snow off our woodshed that the heavy snows had pushed sideways about 15" at the roof, I heard this most terrible scraping noise a couple of times. By the time that I waded thru the deep snow back the 60 plus feet to our car to see what was going on, there was no one there. BUT ... the rest of my driveway had been almost totally cleared with one of their large tractors with a huge loader on the front. I still had a lot of shoveling to do to level at this section, but let me tell you I didn't mind that one bit!! ;-))
Then the snowing slacked off to only getting a dusting up to about 3" every few days and then we starting getting some sunshine and NO snowing. It seemed like it took forever for the snow to beginning melting, but it finally did and the only reason that I could say this, is because I'd take my measuring stick out to the same couple of areas and measure it each day. But just by looking at all the snow still stacked up in my front yard that was higher than my deck, you couldn't see any difference till it dropped below the deck level!! By this time we still had over 36'' of snow all around our property, but I was able to make it down to our rental home just below us so I could go inside to check it out. We already knew the 40' porch had collapsed because we could see it from the roadway, so that was no big surprise. But when I did go inside and see that the ceiling was still up, that there were no leaks or damage any where, I just said my Thanks to God, eh!!
The wood shed at the back of the house is made out of tree/poles and the weight of the heavy/wet snow had pushed the wood shed roof poles thru one of the window panes and broke it. But there was no water damage on the inside. We also had a lot of nights down in the low 20's at this time, and we have 1 if not 2 water leaks now from frozen water pipes that burst. We also had a few broken limbs and trees damaged or broken too, but all considered we came out really good, compared to our neighbors higher up Oregon Street and all around Trinity County.
Since I'm a computer GEEK '-)) and photographer too, I took hundreds of pictures to record our winter snows and you'll now be able to see a lot of these pictures, besides a few pictures of 2 other Weaverville people that sent me their shots, eh!! One is the Lester family and the other is the Machewski family, both who live in the Weaverville area. I uploaded all of our individual pictures, plus made them into Slide Shows too. I suggest viewing the Slide Shows FIRST, because anytime that you want to view just one picture all you need to do is 'click' on the large picture in the middle or one of the 'thumbnail' pictures on the right. If you want to see the full size 'original', then 'click' on the word 'download' to the bottom left of the slide show picture. You can do everything from within the Slide Show, eh!!
Later, Bill 'Butch' Keef
Well, where shall I start?? Ok, I'll start at the end first. My Blog or Web site, 'Winter_2008' came about after thinking that since we were hit so hard this year and I wanted to share my story and pictures with others, maybe there were other people around Weaverville that had their own story/pictures that they might like sharing too. So I wrote our local newspaper, The Trinity Journal, about my idea and Amy said that sounded like a good idea to her and put a little 'blurb' in a couple of issues in April asking for some input from others. So far I've only had 2 people to respond, but will go ahead and add their words/pictures with mine, so anyone can view and hopefully enjoy them too.
Now let's get back to the beginning. I've lived up here in the mountains of Weaverville, since September of 1976 and I can only remember 2 other times that we've had a winter this bad. Kathy my wife has lived here since 1982 and she can only remember 1 other time that we've had a winter this bad. Town is about 2,000' elevation, we are about 2,800' elevation and about eye level with Oregon Summit at 2,813' elevation. We can view the lower part of The Trinity Alps which are about 5,000' to over 7,000' elevation, so when winter snows start we can usually see 3-4 snowfalls up in the higher elevation, which each next snow storm getting lower and lower till it gets down to our level. But this winter the first time it snowed we got it too!!
So that was our first warning that this winter was going to be different. Then over the coming weeks, it would snow a few inches like from an inch or so, to 12" to 18" or more. I would shovel the snow off our deck and start clearing the snow away from the walk way, from all around our car and then starting at the rear of the car, work my way down our steep driveway to the road, Oregon Street, trying to keep our driveway open. Normally this would only take me a few hours and it would stay open till the next heavy snowfall. In the meantime, I'd chain up our car, so I could get to town for shopping or prescriptions, post office, bank, etc.
This winter, I'd start the shoveling and only get about 1/4 of our driveway cleared on any one day and then wake up the next morning to find everything covered with more snow!! So I'd then shovel the SAME area again and maybe make it to about 1/3 of our driveway cleared and then more snow that night and have to start all over again!! All of this was before the heavy snowfalls started coming in!! ;-)) By now we'd been unable to get either my car or truck out of the driveway, even chained up, so I had to call my good buddy, Johnny Brinson, to come up with his 4x4 truck and take me to town for much needed supplies, eh!!
The County was keeping Oregon Street open so Johnny had no problem driving the 3 miles up here from 'Main Street', so I waded thru 42'' of snow from our house to the roadway to be picked up. Then when we got back home and unloaded all of my stuff, I didn't want to make more than just 1 trip back up to the house, so I had everything in stong plastic bags thinking ahead of time, and just loaded a couple bag handles on each arm and then grabbed the other bags by their handles with both hands and basically dragged them on top of the snow, little by little, till I got them inside, eh!! BTW, I could hardly use my arms the next day, because of all the strain on them. But if I hadn't of had that 42" of snow to drag the bags on, I probably wouldn't have been able to actually 'carry' all those bags in only one trip either!! ;-))
Then as the weeks went on with more & more snow falling, I finally called our County Road Crew and asked if there was anyway at all that the next time they came up to clear more snow off the roadway, that they could also remove the berm at our driveway too (NOT normally done!!), because my wife is 'handicapped' and should I need to get her to the doctor's office or hospital at any given time OR in worse case having the ambulance come up to get her, I really needed my driveway open. I did have about 3/4 of our driveway open at this time. The next morning when they were back up here clearing more snow off the roadway and I was out in the back of our house, clearing snow off our woodshed that the heavy snows had pushed sideways about 15" at the roof, I heard this most terrible scraping noise a couple of times. By the time that I waded thru the deep snow back the 60 plus feet to our car to see what was going on, there was no one there. BUT ... the rest of my driveway had been almost totally cleared with one of their large tractors with a huge loader on the front. I still had a lot of shoveling to do to level at this section, but let me tell you I didn't mind that one bit!! ;-))
Then the snowing slacked off to only getting a dusting up to about 3" every few days and then we starting getting some sunshine and NO snowing. It seemed like it took forever for the snow to beginning melting, but it finally did and the only reason that I could say this, is because I'd take my measuring stick out to the same couple of areas and measure it each day. But just by looking at all the snow still stacked up in my front yard that was higher than my deck, you couldn't see any difference till it dropped below the deck level!! By this time we still had over 36'' of snow all around our property, but I was able to make it down to our rental home just below us so I could go inside to check it out. We already knew the 40' porch had collapsed because we could see it from the roadway, so that was no big surprise. But when I did go inside and see that the ceiling was still up, that there were no leaks or damage any where, I just said my Thanks to God, eh!!
The wood shed at the back of the house is made out of tree/poles and the weight of the heavy/wet snow had pushed the wood shed roof poles thru one of the window panes and broke it. But there was no water damage on the inside. We also had a lot of nights down in the low 20's at this time, and we have 1 if not 2 water leaks now from frozen water pipes that burst. We also had a few broken limbs and trees damaged or broken too, but all considered we came out really good, compared to our neighbors higher up Oregon Street and all around Trinity County.
Since I'm a computer GEEK '-)) and photographer too, I took hundreds of pictures to record our winter snows and you'll now be able to see a lot of these pictures, besides a few pictures of 2 other Weaverville people that sent me their shots, eh!! One is the Lester family and the other is the Machewski family, both who live in the Weaverville area. I uploaded all of our individual pictures, plus made them into Slide Shows too. I suggest viewing the Slide Shows FIRST, because anytime that you want to view just one picture all you need to do is 'click' on the large picture in the middle or one of the 'thumbnail' pictures on the right. If you want to see the full size 'original', then 'click' on the word 'download' to the bottom left of the slide show picture. You can do everything from within the Slide Show, eh!!
Later, Bill 'Butch' Keef
posted by Viper | 10:45 PM
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