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10 Things I Learned When an Ice Storm Trapped Me in My House for a Week
Going back to my Midwest roots helped me get through the storm of the century.
Portland is famously bad at dealing with winter weather. When I first moved to the area from the Midwest, I couldn’t believe the way everything shut down with an inch of snow. I soon learned that the issue was no one is prepared for bad weather, especially the city.
But last week the weather was bad for anywhere. It started with a couple of inches of snow, then it sleeted on top of it, making the snow freeze over, then the freezing rain came, with periods of sleet and hail just to break it up. The entire city was an ice skating rink with two to three inches of ice on the ground on top of the snow.
Here’s a picture of a chunk of ice I chipped out on my driveway — it’s thicker than my thumb is long:
Forecasters predicted it would melt on Wednesday. It melted on Sunday, leaving most of us completely trapped in our homes for seven days.
I was one of the lucky ones. I had heat, electricity, and internet the entire time and while…
