FREAKY SNOWSTORM IN APRIL! + PHOTOS

Photos by Aquilina Larkins

Hey, y’all – I hope your week has been going well, even with the little hiccup to start it off! 

I don’t know about you guys, but since I moved here in 2019 I have never once seen it snow in April. I’ve never even seen it snow during the spring months, so for me this is definitely a huge first, as I’m sure it was for a lot of you. 

Because of the bad weather not only was in-person learning canceled at Mt. Hood Community College for the day but so were online classes. I mean, it was nice to get an extra day off but this was definitely not in the cards, it seemed. I’m sure we all expected to have to start classes late (initially, MHCC was due to open the campus/begin classes at 10 a.m.), but I looked out my window and watched as the snow grew, and then picked up even more, and things quickly changed. 

The reason behind the online class dismissal was due to the fact that some Mt. Hood students, instructors and others were unfortunately losing electricity. The sudden onslaught of spring snow left nearly 100,000 without power this morning, according to OregonLive.com and nearly 48,000 customers were still without power by afternoon across not only northwest Oregon, but also southwest Washington. Included were large outage clusters in southeast Portland , parts of north Portland, and Beaverton. 

The storm did a little bit of damage (thankfully from what it sounds like so far, it’s fixable, but damage nonetheless) such as bringing down its fair share of trees and tree limbs, and power lines, and closing down some roads in the northwest Portland hills and, of course, either forcing some schools to close for the day or opt for a late start. 

This weather is truly record breaking, as this took place during the spring. According to CNN.com, in over 80 years of recordkeeping (82 years, to be exact) Portland International Airport had never recorded more than a trace of snow in the month of April. As of today that streak has officially ended, as the National Weather Service office measured 1.6 inches there – and looking across the Portland metro area, from 5-plus inches in Gresham and Sandy, to 7-plus inches in Happy Valley and Camas!  

Photos from Aquilina Larkins’s farm in Sandy, Oregon.