Daily Archives: 1 February, 2024

Jack Frost Does Not Like Oregon

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Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing well and having a good time in the new year! January has been quite the busy month here in the Umpqua, but that has really made time fly by! The first few weeks were relatively quiet. We worked on seed cleaning and started the new process of extracting and packaging Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines for an assisted migration project, which addresses their geographic distribution in regards to climate change. It is a monotonous task; however, it does make the time pass because there is always something to be done. At Dorena, there is always something to be done, which I kinda love. I am never bored here.

Buuuuuuut, mid-January a gnarly ice storm hit my area and caused major damage to the community, native deciduous trees, and the power-grid. This storm created a temporary ice rink on every exposed surface and allowed me to slide to the grocery store rather than walking there. Do not get me wrong, it was beautiful, but it was also incredibly dangerous. Although I was lucky and only was without power and water for 6 days, others in the community did not receive their power for almost two weeks. After this experience, I think I take the doomsday preppers a little bit more seriously. This storm left my city in shambles from houses and cars being squashed by trees to fallen telephone lines across roads and sidewalks. Throughout the past few weeks, the community is still recovering and has dramatically increased their supply of firewood.

Post ice storm, Dorena regained power and normal activities returned. We continued on extracting and packaging the Douglases and Pines, but we had the awesome experience of having multiple jobs corps groups and volunteers come in to help the project. It was incredible. The extra hands turned the expected end date from two months to two weeks. Without their help, we would have been extracting and packaging for weeks.

Overall, this month has flown by. I am sure I am missing a few events here and there but that is kinda the gist. There was definitely some good moments, like sowing oaks with everyone in the greenhouses after the storm, which was so fun to drink our coffees and chat, but there were also some learning moments. Life is not life without both sides. This month definitely was a wild ride, but I am excited to see where February takes me. Also unfortunately, last week I did break my laptop; thus, I will have to share all my photos for next month 🙁

Hope y’all have a good February!

Iced in

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I’ve never thought of Oregon, especially western Oregon, as having a particularly harsh winter. I was expecting lots of rain, this is the “wet coast” after all, but I still didn’t think it would be harsh like the winters I was used to in Utah and Colorado. I especially wasn’t expecting a winter storm so severe it closed down our nursery for a week due to unsafe driving conditions and a lack of power and water. This wasn’t just a winter storm though, this was an ice storm, and wow it delivered a LOT of ice.

I had never experienced an ice storm before, so I didn’t know what to expect. People who have been here for a while didn’t seem too concerned about it, so I figured it wasn’t much to worry about. I thought “okay, it’ll just be cold for a couple of days, nothing too bad” and things will go on as normal. Plot twist, that is not what happened.

We finished our (first) week of extracting and packing firs and pines with relatively few problems, most of the problems weren’t real problems, we just needed to work the kinks out so we could effectively extract and pack 62,000 trees (yes, 62,000, I know, it’s insane). After a week of putting trees into boxes, I was ready for the long weekend. My co-intern and I had plans for most of the weekend, we were going to go hiking and shopping one day, then go to the coast another. None of those things happened because starting that Friday night, everything was snow and ice covered.

At first we decided to change our hiking plans from Saturday to Monday as it was snowing Saturday when we were supposed to meet up, we figured it was better safe than sorry. Then Sunday came and the road conditions were somehow worse than Saturday, so we cancelled our coast plans and hunkered down in our perspective homes. Fast forward to Wednesday, and my house hasn’t had power since Tuesday night, but it’s starting to warm up and rain at least. By this point, me, my roommates, and all of our neighbors had been trapped in our houses since Saturday and were all going stir crazy, so we all went outside and started shoveling the melting ice so we could try to escape. After hours of shoveling ice in the rain, we had cleared tracks for car tires down our hill to the main road, and after a couple of attempts and fixes, we were able to escape.

This was my first time experiencing an ice storm, and I have to say, I think I prefer the snow that Utah and Colorado produce. This position has been full of a lot of firsts, which has been very exciting, but this is a first I probably could have done without. Oh well, at least now I know to prepare better the next time Oregon has an ice storm.