THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM OF THE CENTURY

It's a running joke between Craig and I.  Every time we close up the house for the Winter, it doesn't snow.  The two times I decided to try and stay at the house, once in 2008 when we broke the record for snowfall in a 24 hour period, and one again in November of 2010 where a 100 year old record was broken for snowfall, it's a guarantee that snow will be sky high.

So imagine my hesitation getting back onto the truck this winter, which measured by seasons past, has had the least amount of snowfall so far, and hearing about a major storm to hit the Pacific Northwest.  Of course, our first load would take us right into it's path and those poor souls in Seattle can blame me for the woes of snow driving on hilly roads.

These pictures were taken as we headed north, the proverbial "calm before the storm", as I marveled at the lack of any snow on Black Butte, and virtually no snow on the ground as we passed Weed, CA and passed over the Siskiyou Summit. We only managed to hit some rain showers as we decided to stop early for the evening in Aurora, OR and await the arrival of the storm and traveling when the roads would be less crowded around 1am.

We got through Portland and then as we crossed the border into Washington the snow was falling and the roads were more white than asphalt.  What also surprised us, was the amount of traffic that was still on the roads, and being more afraid of the four-wheelers than the weather conditions, we took it slow and easy, as we passed car after car spun out on the Interstate.

What normally would have been only a 3 hour drive, turned into a 4 1/2 hour drive which still got us into the Costco in Sumner, WA right on time for our scheduled delivery at 5am.  After our unload we drove the 10 miles to our Company Yard in Pacific to park and await further instructions as to our next load.  Thankfully, our next load is out of Renton, Wa tonight at 10pm, where we will once again hope to avoid traffic as we make our way over Snoqualmie Pass (hoping we don't have to chain up) to make our delivery in Spokane in the morning.