SIBERIAN EXRESS
Before they started giving winter storms individual names, like hurricanes, which seems stupid to a Floridian, I heard the term “Siberian Express” to describe the arrival of an extremely cold air mass of Siberian origins. Evidently it was coined by a meteorologist January 17, 1982, during an event called “Cold Sunday” that broke many all-time record lows across the U.S.
I was living then in the Pacific Northwest between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific, a region known for salubrious weather, allegedly because the Japanese Current produced mild fronts that largely blocked bitter northern storms. But not always. I do not recall if 1982 was one of those failures where we suffered like the northern plains and central U.S., but our first one was thereabouts, and local weathermen blamed the Siberian Express.
Power went out right away. The snow piled high and deep. Our home’s window glass was uninsulated, and thick ice formed inside as well as outside. Evidently from moisture in our breath freezing. On our plateau, denuded by decades of clear-cutting that removed protecting fir forests, the wind was clocked at hurricane speeds. Wind chill in the sub-zero teens. Not the last time it happened when the Siberian Express rolled through.
My work was fifty miles from home. First time I ever considered tire chains for my VW Bug, whose rear-wheel drive under the weight of the engine made it damn near unstickable. I wallowed in the snow in the frigid dark outside a parts store to install new-fangled plastic chains. Was soaked through, but the little VW heater dried and warmed me on the way home. Interstate Five was a snow-buried, lumpy wilderness. The larger lumps were abandoned cars. The semis were buried up to their headlights. I was absolutely alone out there. The hour commute took twice as long at chained-up speed but the Bug never faltered. Even when one of the rinky-dink plastic chains snapped. My faith in Herr Porsche’s design was vindicated.
One of my first purchases when I moved back to the plateau had been a Country wood stove. When I got home the wife had it ticking along, providing an island of warmth in the living room. Candles for light. A pot of water on the bolted-on cast-iron round plate for soup and instant coffee.
The bitter cold infiltrated the rest of the house. So we draped old Army blankets from the living room entryway to block drafts, and moved all our sleeping bags inside. The dogs and the cat joined us. The kids found it an adventure. Some businesses in an adjacent town had generators, so I drove over there and bought studded tires to replace the shredded plastic chains. Power came back in the lowlands first, though the roads still were bad. First day I went to work, I passed about thirty cars stalled at a minor hill coated with ice. I chose the oncoming lane since the far side of the hump was a long hill, dropping close to eight hundred feet to the lowlands. There was no oncoming traffic. I remember stranded motorists yelling and screaming curses and flipping me off as I cruised by.
Don’t recall how long conditions persisted. Do recall there was no national outcry about the failure of our power grid, or our tribulations. Of course this predated the “social-media” phenomenon. Later meteorological explanations were that the frozen Arctic Ocean produced the frigid air for the “Express,” a high-pressure system in Siberia that was blocked from southward movement by the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau. So it flowed down into North America.
Our first visit from the Siberian Express came to mind with all the news last week of temperature records crashing everywhere, and heavy snow, and people dying here and there. Texas was much in the news; Texans are no more accustomed to such weather extremes than those of us in the blessed Northwest. Though I recall Western novels dealing with dreadful “blue northers” that sound a lot like the Siberian. This time around, the Siberian missed us. We had snow to the car bumper in the driveway, brief power outages, and temps in the low twenties. Bad enough to make me regret I never installed a generator, since at my age and disabled, I sleep with an oxygen mask and without power it doesn’t work.
There’s a lot of adverse criticism this time going around about the controllers of power grids not installing expensive safeguards despite previous blackouts. It’s all too human to relax after a crisis as years go by with no recurrence. Hell, all my thirty years on the plateau I could not persuade my then-wife of the need for an expensive home generator. The periodic visits of the Express were not enough to overcome her fiscal objections.
One year at Christmas we all wound up at her sister’s house, where her millwright boyfriend had both a big pellet stove and a generator, and overflow refugees camped out in his propane-heated travel trailer. His generator powered the stove for Christmas dinner and a record player for Christmas carols. Gift exchange by candlelight. That was the storm with winds so fierce that, in a Safeway parking lot where they had a generator, I had to turn my truck sideways with the driver’s door downwind to be able to open it and get out. Wind chill was way below zero. Falling trees killed at least one person.
I’ve been gone from the plateau a long time. Our son built his home in our old pasture — complete with powerful generator — so ensuing storms were no more than an annoyance. Since my grandkids were home-schooled, they didn’t even get a “snow day.” I suspect those long-ago Expresses colored his self-reliant thinking.
Sunny here today, with rain showers. All the snow long gone. Typical for Western Washington lowlands. In a week or two, things probably will calm down in Texas and elsewhere. Maybe the incident will motivate better planning, maybe it won’t. At the end of the day, each householder needs to examine his or her own priorities. Like me, calculating cost of a generator against my fixed income. Or sit back and rely on questionable reliability of authority to protect them. You’d think Texans would know better.
