The unbearable lightness of fleeting snow in the Willamette Valley

Last Monday morning, the snow-covered ground in the Quad was already dotted with the reemerging tips of the tallest blades of grass. One lone snowcat stood shrinking, circled in a green ribbon of uncovered and muddy turf where rolling up its head had stripped the snow from the grass completely. The fuller trees had green shadows. It was 11 o'clock, and the snow day was about over.

The difference between the classic marshmallow-land snow day of imagination and the reality of our kind of snow day — down below the mountains, beside the rivers and along the coasts — is a matter of positive and negative space. Except for rare instances like the 2008-2009 winter break, the image of a white winter day in the Willamette Valley is not realized in where the snow is, but in where it is not.

The first gaps in the whiteness appear early in the morning: a few asphalt-colored lines that extend down the roads and loop in parking lots. One thickens for a few yards in a worrying squiggle that once crosses the obscured yellow line. The decision to drive in an inch of snow is an individualized conundrum, and because Valley-dwellers don't see it a lot, they may not be prepared to drive in it, or they may not know how. Or, God forbid, not know that they don't know how.

At around 10 o'clock, the footprints appear in the colors of grass and concrete. Students break out the snow boots, which their feet will sweat in by evening. An hour remains to take pictures of the rare weather, which has settled on things like paths and trees usually overlooked when in full color. Rocks and iced roofs look masterpiece-worthy. Handrails. Bicycle racks. Snow-filled sidewalk cracks. Benton Hall. A row of empty park benches thinly disguised as white sofas. The Weather Channel-issued inch of snow sits on them unmarked, looking like a trick cushion waiting for a pair of dry pants.

Buildings — chemistry and computer lab — breathe just like people do. Vents blow visible, vaporous smoke rings the color of the snow into the air.

Less than an hour now remains before the melt begins.

Something out of sight, behind the ventilation pipes, can be heard dripping.

By the time all of the snapshots are on Facebook, roundabout 11 o'clock, the photographers stand in puddles. Sidewalks have become exposed again, polished with snow melt. Gray smears have appeared up against walls and curbs and in sidewalk cracks — yesterday's litter processed by several freezes and melts into unidentifiable curdles. What was once a leaf, a dropped sandwich crust or a paper flyer fallen from a telephone pole is now indistinguishable from a crushed earthworm.

In the Quad, a pebble eye drops from a snowcat into a pile of pine needle whiskers.

A small waterfall has formed over the edge of a downtown roof. It spatters onto the sidewalk below in a puddle that is growing quickly into a small city lake, clouded by the paper pulp, the liquified leaf and frozen worms. Gray flecks stain passing boots. Sustaining the flow is mist from a hundred vents, drainage from a mile of sidewalks and last night's flurry turned to rain.

Here, rain sticks better than snow.

Annecy Beauchemin, diversions writer

737-2232 managing@dailybarometer.com