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Snow In Portland Yesterday 12-14-2016

Coss

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Coss, how much snow is normal there? I realize that this is "beyond the pale", but what (if anything) can you normally expect?
None. Most years if it does snow, it's all gone by the next day. This is being touted as a record snow storm on record.
They get snow up in the mountains, but not down in the cities. We only have two seasons here, Spring and Fall, or at least that's how it feels.
I've lived in the PNW 41 years, before that, it was South Chicago. Call City/Blue Island/Lansing/Hammond; born in Indiana Harbor; grew up in East Chicago, IN
 

BilgeRat

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Yah, so you had an early education in snow; the regular kind, and lake effect snow... BTW, my last boat used to run through Blue Island and South Chicago, and I did Indiana Harbor by water in 1976...
 

Coss

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I went back for a visit about 8 years ago; and the Harbor is just a wasteland now.
And the weather here just keeps up the fun going; it got up to 39 yesterday, so everything started a melt, then it dropped to 14 last night, and hasn't gotten any warmer, it's 13 here right now. Everything is encased in ice; really pretty, but crazy kind of slick.
This has been the worst winter we've had here for this kind of weather. Usually it's gray and rainy, but not downpour rain, just the aggravating drizzle.
And if out power went out, we'd be so screwed.
 

BilgeRat

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Have you lost tree limbs to the ice? Ice storms in the south are devastating, and they usually only get any media attention on the Weather Channel. It's nuts here too. January here was a damn cold month years back, we're having rain and 50F forecast for next weekend. Sheesh.

Harbor as wasteland... I was back for the first time since 1976 a few summers ago, Coss. Nathan Holth, who runs historicbridges.org, wanted to photograph the Scherzer lift bridges over the canal for the website, so I dragged our little tinny up to the marina east of Mittal Steel, and we rounded the steel mill and headed in. Nothing but brownfields from what I remember... In 1976, there was one smallish ore boat stationed there that only ran between the outer harbor, where it would load taconite, to the inner harbor through the aforementioned bridges to the inner harbor where they would unload for a mill in there. Nothing left of it... (And for the crew, that had to be the shittiest, must boring run anywhere on the Great Lakes...) There was work going on to build a bridge over the canal at (I believe) Homan Avenue; Nathan told me that the original had collapsed some years before, and that's the first that I had known about that as well.

South Chicago is the same. When I started on the water in 1976, there were four operating steel mills above Lake Calumet: Wisconsin Steel, Republic Steel, Acme Steel and US Steel. A few remains of Republic still stand, but everything else is gone. Wisconsin has been gone so long (very early eighties) that fairly large trees grow on the site. Where US Steel stood has been mowed flat for future development. The ore yard wall still stands at North Slip; there were beehives placed at the lake end the last time I was in there. The Huletts at Republic are now gone; I was lucky enough to get photos of them still standing and of the demolition. On and on... I am glad, however, that I did get the chance to finish out my career where I started from. If you google "bilgerat flickr", and go to the albums, you can find a lot of my photos of the area, if you're interested.
 

Coss

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When I went back to visit, one of the things I said to myself on the way out was "what would I ever want to come back here for?" Going past old hang outs and places I lived are long lost memories; it's nothing like when I lived there; I'm so glad I moved when I did (Oct 25th 1975).
The Steel Mills, I did work at Inland Steel for a year in 71 as a Crane Mechanic first and transferred to Pipe fitter (I guess they didn't like how I'd square the cranes during maintenance, and shoving one through the outside wall because I was going faster than I thought and couldn't slow down enough; man there was a lot of dust that came down :becky:) I worked in the 24" rolling mill. My step mothers Dad was chief engineer on one of the bigger Ore boats; I got to ride along up to Escanaba MI and back once, that was a pretty cool trip; even flew model airplanes in the hold on the way up there. But around 1972 I knew that had to be a better world somewhere, because that sure was hell. I have so many relatives back there I couldn't go anywhere and not run into 1. They all knew me as "the one that moved away" and had no idea what Seattle was like, let alone where it was. Other than "Way out on the West Coast".
But no love lost back there, Pacific NW has been home for 41 years, and will probably stay that way.
 
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