I am quite familiar with my novel-writing trilogy I have been working on, but I most certainly didn’t see a snow trilogy coming our way the last time I wrote this column, on Wednesday afternoon.
It appeared moisture would stay south of us until Saturday. Well, that didn’t happen.
So the first in the trilogy hit Thursday and dumped snow in the northern areas of the county from Salmon Creek to Ridgefield. Downtown Vancouver and the foothills received much less.
Snow amounts ranged from 3 inches to 13 inches.
Installment No. 2 in our nonfiction novel hit Friday faster than you could place the first book on the bookshelf. This time snow was lighter, with amounts from 1 to 4 inches common.
You had to be a quick reader, as the final in the series arrived early Saturday.
Moderate snow began around 10 a.m. and came down steadily all day with heavier amounts I noticed from reports in the Felida and Salmon Creek areas.
As I wrote this column at 5 p.m. Saturday, outside it was a white-out, with some 14 to 16 inches of snow on the ground in the Salmon Creek area. Very difficult to measure as the heavy snow compacted the old snow.
Visibility was less than a quarter of a mile, and it still was coming down.
I was getting reports of sleet (ice pellets) and freezing rain mixing in some areas of the county.
Matt Sloan in the Heights reported sleet with his snow at 5 p.m.
The weather forecast was a tricky one, with more heavy precipitation moving in and a warmer nose of air moving northward toward us.
It all spells a disaster as we finally complete the final chapter of the novel.
Sleet and freezing rain will take over at varying times around the county, and then just rain and temperatures above freezing.
The saga may be over sometime today but will live on in the minds of many for a long, long time.
Just plain rain this coming week, so more time to read a non-developing story.
Patrick Timm is a local weather specialist. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Reach him at http://patricktimm.com.
