More schizophrenic weather in Astoria

This is basically the same shot as I posted yesterday morning, it's just more densely white. Snow in Astoria is rare anyway, although we've had more of it in 2008 than in most years. We're supposed to be in the midst of a storm right now. It's been a bit schizo, with wind and chill, heavy snow, then rain, then bright sunny skies, etc. What we're expecting now is a big freeze, although it was supposed to start a few days ago and it didn't happen. This time it's looking more likely. There's less slush to freeze today than there was a few days ago, but there's still enough of it. Streets of glass is what we're talking about for this weekend, it seems.

I took the photo above this morning looking west along the River Walk from our place near 15th Street.

This is looking out to the river. Yeah, nice green bushes, all covered in white.

Indoors, it was warmer, and we're still scrambling to get orders packed up and shipped. We also have a lot of incoming inventory for the last seasonal push to fill new orders and get backorders out. One of the UPS trucks got delayed due to the weather, so we have one shipment that won't be here till Monday. In all, Sue and Barbara have been doing an incredible job. Lee pitched in and filled orders for a few days before he left for Bend. Now he's over there and it's inadvisable to drive back this weekend. Whatever is going on here, it's colder there, although it's drier. He thought Saturday might be a good driving day, but now it looks like Saturday will come with a lot of snow and icy roads. Barbara couldn't get in to work from Washington, so I packed up orders nonstop for two days and got behind on my computer work. She made it in today by getting a ride with someone with the right tires. We don't all get snow tires here; it's usually very easy to get through winter without them if you live in town. Sue came in every day. The road up near her house was a bit slippery, so we weren't sure from day to day, and I don't know how I would have handled the Christmas rush without her. We'll see what happens with the weather over the next few days. I haven't been out that much, mainly since I had things I had to get done on the computer. If we have snow and not too many orders, I may put my boots on and go walking. For anyone who doesn't know, Astoria is built on hills like a mini San Francisco, so it doesn't take much ice to make life in this town pretty interesting, and this weekend we could have a lot of it. I've rented some movies and stocked up on food. If Gimre's is open on Saturday, I may try to get those crampon type things that attach to your shoes.

I liked this pic of the Coast Guard ship noodling around just past our catwalk. I'm not sure what it was doing. It apparently sent out a small boat from the mothership, but I didn't see where it was going or why. The CG has been on the river a lot lately.

Here are the little birds I had in an earlier blog post (December 14). Thanks to Tom Means, I learned that they're called buffleheads. Wikipedia says they're one of the smallest ducks and the name comes from "buffalo" and "head," because their heads are rounded. The females are the ones with the stripe that's about the size of your finger. The males have white over a big chunk of the head, looking like a large white piece of pie. I thought I hadn't seen any, but looking back at the photos, I did see some bad pictures. I'll keep working on my buffelhead education and also try to get a good photo. They winter in protected river areas like ours, it seems.

This was a site. The river pilots work in inclement weather, for sure. What else are they going to do? It was snowing fairly hard, although the long lens condenses the flakes more and makes it look nearly opaque.

Interesting lighting. That's the pilot boat out there with the ship. I couldn't read the name through the snow.

In awhile the sun came out, and melted the snow from the sunny side of many objects. It didn't get much above 32 degrees today. The other day most everything melted finally, because the temp was around 38.

It stayed sunny and beautiful most of the afternoon. This is looking east along the River Walk. The entrance to Marine Drive on the right is 15th Street, and I'm standing just in front of The Animal Store.