babysteps

These don't really show the magnitude of the damage, but you get an idea.

Texas is in FAR worse shape than us. The storm itself was bad but we warmed up to our winter normal of 40 degrees within a day or two, so the ice melted quickly and the temps aren't dangerous. We still have about 100,000 without power but no one is in danger of freezing to death like down there with their single digits!! Although to hear people talk on the news... you'd think we all barely survived... lol. This was the worst storm from a power outage standpoint that we've ever had, according to the news. The only real concern I had was my parents. They live with us now

We had an ice storm here the end of last week. It was a pretty good one, as storms go - at my house we got anywhere from 1-1.5 inches of ice. The tree carnage is impressively awful. We lost probably a dozen or more trees completely in our little 2 acre woods, and hubby estimates close to 90% of our trees lost their tops. Trees and power lines down across roads everywhere. It's a real mess. (As an aside - in the past 6 months in my neck of the woods we've had fires, floods, wind storms, and now an ice storm. There's only one element left and I REALLY don't want earth to join the party!!!)

So... it doesn't do either one.

Well zowie, we sure got the rain we needed last night. To the point that we were issued flash flood and tornado watches, lol. Those alerts came across our phones yesterday and my 16 year old just laughed. Her comment was that at this point they could announce godzilla or alien invaders and she'd just figure "yep. 2020." For the first time in 2 weeks, the air smells fresh outside. 😊

Happy day! We have been taken OFF the evac alerts completely 😊 No rain yet but lots of damp fog so far. The smoke and fog together makes driving extra fun (yikes) but I'll happily deal with driving by braille if it means we are getting these fires under control. Officially 0% containment still, but they are making progress! My kids still at home are 17, 16, 14, 7 and 1. So two of them can drive and they do have a vehicle to use, and no it's not LOGICAL for me to suddenly panic over leaving them, and yet... that's where I was yesterday. Today is a better da

Several of the fires *were* caused by arson, but none have been confirmed to be people connected to the protests. We are still at level 1 (be ready) and the fire isn't making much progress our direction. The weather has cooperated a little - it's been cooler and damp yesterday and today. No rain but we'll take what moisture we can get! Our air quality is still ghastly. It's so far off the charts that they don't even know what sort of health effects it will have. Anything over 300 is hazardous and we're clocking numbers over 1000 in some areas. (Not here, although we w

Yeah. That took place about 15 miles from us, on Monday night when the fire went roaring down the canyon pushed by that windstorm. Their 13 year old son and 73 year old grandmother didn't make it out. They are a well known and loved family in our area. We had searchers everywhere looking for the little boy for two days in the midst of the hot zone. He tried to take shelter in a car.

Our area is still at lvl 1, so we came home. We are keeping everything as close to packed and ready as we can. I saw how fast the fire moved on Monday. Even with the winds so much quieter, that fire is huge now. The prediction of rain next week has been changed to lightning. Because THAT'S what we need right now. The dog, the cats, and the 7 year old are much happier to be home! The rest of us are too but the older ones are more aware of the risks. We have left the livestock at their evac location for now. I grabbed an extra litter box and tucked it into the

Yeah. We've had at least a dozen arrests in the past three days of people looting homes of evacuees.

The fire that was 500 acres on Sunday? It's now nearly 160,000 acres and is the largest fire in Oregon. It's also 0% contained and is only 8.7 miles from my house. But! The windstorm is over, the winds are coming back to their normal level and direction (away from populated areas!) and there's even a little rain in next week's forecast. And they've lowered my evacuation alert to level 1, so we're thinking of going back to the house and kinda living out of suitcases to stay ready to go if need be.

We do have all important papers, laptop/phones and chargers, photo albums, etc. The sheep and cows we moved to a friend's place well out of the way, the dog, cats and rabbits are with us. I managed to remember everything for the critters except a litter box for the cats. Figures. I'm discovering that figuring out where "emergency" and "regular life" intersect is trickier than I would have thought. My location is still at level 2, the fire has been held at about 8-10 miles from my house for a full 36 hours now (although we're due for another wind shift now that the storm is dying d

Mt Rider I wish I could pick your brain right now!! We've had a couple of moderate (as of yesterday, one was 500 acres, one was 20,000) sized forest fires burning about 2 hours east of us for the past couple weeks. Our prevailing winds are always NW to SE, so there was no concern for our area. Until yesterday. Yesterday we had a "historic level" windstorm start. It's supposed to last until sometime tomorrow, winds are up to 75mph, and it's blowing from the E. Those fires went from 85+ miles away to about 10 miles away overnight. Most of the town

Oregon has already added 8 more to that number 😔 and as a country we appear to be adding about a thousand a day now. A few days ago it was only about 200 a day. Crazy and sad.

Okay, I know this is serious, but I got a giggle when I opened a webpage that tracks the numbers involved in this crisis... and got this. I think there's a slight glitch in their math... (they have since fixed it, thankfully!)