Weather Continued

We had hail on Thursday and hail on Friday, snow on Friday and freezing rain Friday night. And now it looks like spring. Maybe it really is this time. Goodness, it's March in western Oregon.

Weather variations are fun, as long as they don't send people careening into ditches. Yesterday I cut over from Halsey to Peoria Rd on American Drive. Roads were clear in Halsey, but by the paper mill they became mildly treacherous -- the mix of sweeping curves (banked though they are, I'm not sure that helps a whole lot when it's slick) and slush/snow. I personally traversed the territory without episode, but I noted tire tracks coming up from (going down into?) the deep roadside ditch near one curve (the tracks were in the field). There was a van driving SLOWLY along toward me, and there were tracks in the slush/snow as if it had done a U-ey in the road. Looking for something they lost, or a vehicle in a ditch? I went a little farther and beheld a red emergency vehicle coming my way. Now, the funny thing is that all three peculiarities may be completely unrelated. The emergency vehicle could have been for a stove-top fire, the slow vehicle may have been looking for a lost shoe, the tracks by the ditch... it's hard to think of a favorable reason for them. Maybe some dude having fun.

The flipped SUV north of the town of Peoria explained itself. And my friend LD informed me of three accidents that occurred Thursday along Peoria Rd -- a PT Cruiser (unintentionally) in someone's yard, a 4WD truck in the ditch, a vehicle into a power pole. Western Oregonians don't know how to drive in a measling inch of snow.