Want to watch Seattle drivers panic and slide all over the road while driving in two inches of snow? No? Okay... how about we add a jaunty soundtrack from Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass? OH, I AM SO "IN."

* I'm tired of the words "snowpocalypse" and "snowmageddon." Can you think of a new term for people freaking out over a small amount of snow, and put it in the comments? Thanks.

AHHHHH!! SNOWLAMITY! (That's like "snow" + "calamity" = "snowlamity.") We dodged a snowlamity bullet today—we, being everyone who isn't dumb enough to live in the West Hills—BUT HOW SHALL WE FARE TOMORROW?? Here's the learned opinion of Fox 12's Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen on the adorably geeky Fox 12 Weather Blog. (By the way, the commenters on this blog are extremely pleasant. Please make a note of it.)

THIS EVENING (Through at least 10pm): Rain/snow showers, turning to steady rain/snow later…most sticking snow at/above 1,000′ through our 10pm show. Light accumulations during this time on the hills, this will be the calmest period.

OVERNIGHT THROUGH 7:00 AM: Winter Storm Watch is still up, and NWS will probably upgrade to a Winter Storm Warning mid-afternoon to be safe. I still think we’ll escape a big snow event here in Portland, but it’s going to be VERY CLOSE. So I’ll forecast 1-3″ of heavy wet snow possible anywhere from Wilsonville north through Clark County (all of the metro area) between Midnight and 5am. No snow for Wilsonville south to Salem. Once again, gut feeling is we get little or nothing here, but it’s safest to forecast (Dec 29, 2009) a few inches in the dark of night.

Snowlamity (probably) diverted!

• How am I supposed to bike to work now?!

Topics include:
• Why does Portland cancel school for, like, a quarter inch of snow but not super heavy rain?
• Portlanders don't know how to handle the snow, dognabit!
• Snow is pretty!

Send good snow photos (snowtos) to news@portlandmercury.com and we'll post 'em.

Continue reading »

Look what fugliness Etsy hath wrought this time:

However, if you are a woman, or just a man who chooses to avoid the oft-lampooned condition of actually having a beard, this would be a super handy temporary fix to avoid freezing your face off while you attempt to bike commute during the maybe-sorta-maybe-sorta-not-gonna-happen snowy-icy cold today. Only $40!

Today may be all warm and in the 40s, but tomorrow.... tomorrow meteorologists are already describing as a frighteningly vague "major event."

Snow! beginning in the afternoon.
Freezing Rain! continuing until midnight.
"Significant amounts of snow, freezing rain, ice, or slush!" destroying your commute.

If you have to drive up hills, use chains. If you can, take transit and pray to the Gods of TriMet that your bus doesn't get stuck.

Best case scenario: Stay home and film people out your window.

Cadallaca, "Winter Storm '98." It's a song about Oregon and snow. I was 16 in 1998 and that might've been the year my dad took me to a parking lot to teach me how to snow-drive. Last winter I had to abandon my roommate's car on the side of Burnside, 6 blocks from my house, so I guess the driving lessons didn't take. Oregonians. I know. We suck.

While I'm not going to justify the actions of the rapscallion who wrote scatological words on various snow covered cars on NE 28th—between Burnside and Stark—that doesn't mean I didn't think it was pretty funny in a really juvenile way.

From the "Poo Mobil" to "Diarhea" (it's a tough word to spell, I won't judge you for missing it), almost every vehicle on the entire block was prominently marked. Nice form, young prankster. Keep honing those skills and you'll be working here in no time!

Because if you do, you might want to walk back over to my house and pick up your damn stroller.

This frozen block of stroller has been abandoned out in front of my house since Saturday, and I'm a little concerned for its former occupant and the sort of parent that would just ditch baby's ride in someone's front yard. Aren't these things expensive?

Also, it's days like this that make me wish I defaulted on my mortgage and bought that cherry red Hummer. Look at that thing! Boom! Right over the snow.

While KATU (studio location: NE 21st and Sandy) has been frantically, giddily engaging in nonstop reporting on SNOWPOCALYPSE!!—indeed, they've been breathlessly, repetitively announcing minute-by-minute conditions for days now, reporting from such far-flung locales as, say, the snowy intersection at NE 21st and Sandy—one thing that's utterly awesome about their coverage is meteorologist Scott Sistek's excellently named weather blog, Partly to Mostly Bloggin'.

Just looking outside and you can tell Old Man Winter paid us a visit, but in Lake Stevens, it looks like he put in a personal appearance!

GYAH! THE FUCK IS THAT? HAUNTED ICICLE! HAUNTED GODDAMN ICICLE! OLD MAN WINTER WILL KILL US ALL! THERE HE IS! KILL IT! KILL IT! IF WE MELT HIM THE SNOW WILL GO AWAY!

KILL IT!

From the Mercury Flickr Pool:

greenwoodimages

The initiation of a Snowball Earth event would involve some initial cooling mechanism, followed by runaway cooling due to increasing ice accumulation. The initial cooling could be facilitated by an equatorial continental distribution, which would increase the Earth's albedo near the equator, where most solar radiation is incident.

This arrangement would also allow rapid, unchecked weathering of continental rocks, a process that absorbs the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, resulting in further cooling.

Alternatively, changes in solar energy output or perturbations of Earth's orbit could act as a trigger. However the initial cooling comes about, resultant ice accumulation would reflect solar energy back to space, further cooling the atmosphere and generating more ice cover.

This feedback loop could eventually produce a frozen equator as cold as modern-day Antarctica.

Via Wikipedia.

After watching days of hysterical ARCTIC BLAST!!! news coverage, I've had a kind of epiphany (huh, that's appropriate for the holiday season.) From here on out, I refuse to watch anymore news coverage of snow events. That's right, I'm living on instinct.

I've realized that my years in Portland have turned me into a whiny little bitch. Whaaaaaaah, I can't go outside because it's too coooold! Waaaaaaah, I can't leave the house because it's snoooowing! Whaaa, whaaa, whaaaaaa.

Eff that! I seem to have forgotten that I grew up in the Rocky Mountains. I also lived in Alaska fer chrissakes. I'm trying to remember at what point, exactly, Portland's winter took my nuts. Well, I'm over it. From now on, I will know the weather by the scent in the air, and the shades of the clouds. I shall venture into the cold and wet! I shall drive on the ice! I shall wear only animal skins and hunt the mighty ptarmigan for sustenance. I shall get my nuts back!

In other words, I'll follow the (NSFW) example of GI Joe's Snowjob:

I've been getting all of my weather news via Twitter, like this reaction video from the One True b!X that really drives home the severity of the situation:

Plus I have learned that the Green Dragon will be open tonight because they aren't "scared of a little snow"; Powell's is open regular hours today; as of an hour ago it was still snowing a little in St. Johns... thanks new media!!