Big storm brings cold, snow, ice, strong winds

A white Christmas gave way to a blue Boxing Day.

And even more blue conditions – in terms of plummeting temperatures – greeted the La Conner area this week with additional area-wide lowland snowfall anticipated Thursday.

That forecast led Kamiak School District officials to announce as early as Monday that its girls’ basketball team would not travel to La Conner for a non-league basketball game scheduled here tomorrow night.

The Dec. 30 La Conner High boys’ home non-conference basketball game with Auburn Adventist was already on thin ice before the big winter storm hit with word that the Falcons had shut down their hoop programs.

But wintry conditions here did foster increased outdoor sports activities on La Conner’s hills, the sloped Shelter Bay golf course and other areas conducive to sledding, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.

“The kids are out sledding here now as we speak,” La Conner Mayor Ramon Hayes said on Monday from his home off Washington Street, atop what locals for decades have dubbed Whitney Hill.

The temperature was 12 degrees when Hayes spoke to the Weekly News.

With La Conner and surrounding areas blanketed with snow that blew in from the Gulf of Alaska, area photographers gladly made the rounds to snap away postcard quality shots.

It wasn’t all fun and games, however.

The severe cold snap included wind gusts between 40-45 mph that wreaked havoc with power lines, causing numerous La Conner area outages, many of them west of Swinomish Channel at Shelter Bay, the Thousand Trails RV Resort, the Hope Island residential area and homes off Indian, Reservation and Snee Oosh roads.

At 3 p.m. Saturday PSE’s website reported six outages affecting 173 customers on the Swinomish Reservation peninsula of Fidalgo Island. The largest, in Shelter Bay west of Shelter Bay Drive and the community’s offices, totaled 135 customers. Limited power came on about 5:30 p.m. Monday. PSE staff made a 6 a.m. Tuesday estimate for full power, but restoration could not be confirmed.

Residents of impacted areas, including those staying in recreational vehicles at Thousand Trails, sought temporary refuge with friends and relatives in the La Conner area with electric service or whose power was restored. Impacted residents with pets booked rooms with inns and hotels that allow furry friends overnight.

Pleas were put out Monday for generators as Puget Sound Energy (PSE) reps indicated power in some locales would not be back on-line until Tuesday morning.

Motorists venturing between La Conner and Mount Vernon did so at their own peril. Black ice was reported on La Conner-Whitney Road and vehicles were spotted in ditches off McLean Road near its intersection with Avon-Allen Road.

La Conner Schools driver’s ed instructor Scott Novak was on the road in his family vehicle occasionally after Christmas and was sometimes passed by drivers in four-wheel drive rigs. The false sense of security on the part of those motorists made him wince.

“Usually when we get snow, the weather warms right up and it melts off and roads are safe again,” he said.

Not so this time. Frigid temperatures have remained in place, thus locking snowfall in place and keeping roads icy.

Just to get out on the road has been a chore. The steady snowfall, which accumulated eight or more inches through Monday, required repeated shoveling of driveways.

Working on the water brought its own special challenges.

“You know Christmas is over,” Dunlap Towing skipper Tom Zimmerman quipped in a public social media post, “when you crawl on the tugboat at 5 a.m. and all your windows are iced up, the shore power cord will not come apart even though your deckhand is beating on it and your tie-up lines are frozen to the cleats.”

With widespread electric service interruptions, low-voltage brownouts among them, it was no easy task finding a local restaurant open after Christmas for a hot meal and coffee. The Forks at Skagit Bay on First Street filled the void Sunday as the only eatery with an ‘Open’ sign in place.

On the farm front, La Conner’s Dean Swanson reflected: “Snow is a lifesaver, but four degrees is hard to survive. It’s early, so the buds haven’t thought that it’s spring and taken off. This early cold weather is better than cold weather in February, but there will be some damage whether it’s 20% or 80%. Cabbage crops, the snow cover really helps, but everybody’s gonna have issues. I took a picture of my thermometer on June 30 when it was 107 and today when it was four. The spread of temperatures for 2021is huge – over a 90-degree high and low difference for the year.”

La Conner has received more than its share of severe weather in 2021, a so-called La Nina year in which colder than normal sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean trigger below average temperatures on land.

A foot of snow fell here in mid-February, forcing Town Public Works crews to work extended hours plowing streets and clearing sidewalks. Just four months later, in late June, La Conner suffered through a record heat wave that required use of public cooling stations. In September, fierce winds took down trees and limbs across western Washington.

National Weather Service meteorologist Mary Butwin advised the region’s residents on Sunday to expect high temperatures in the mid-20s and lows in the teens followed by more snow showers tomorrow (Thursday).