Nick of time

Houn' Dawg sent us an email early yesterday that said, "Boy Oh' Boy!!!ya ought to see it snow. Been snowin' hard all morning w/about 3" so far and looks like snow till Tues.  You guys left just in time, way to go."  The photo above is from HD's back porch.  We talked last evening.  He said it had been a pretty tough snow day in Eastern Idaho and looked to get tougher in the days ahead.

The Pocatello NWS People used some strong language to describe the situation this morning.  (We've added bold emphasis to some of their words.)

TODAY THROUGH TUE NIGHT. GREAT AMOUNTS OF SNOW AND  STRONG WIND WILL DEVELOP DURING THIS PERIOD...STARTING THIS AFTERNOON.

THIS ONE  IS THE STRONGEST AND LIKELY WORST WEATHER OF THE THREE. EXTREMELY STRONG WIND...HEAVY PRECIPITATION...AND BONE CHILLING COLD ARE POSSIBLE WITH THIS THIRD FEATURE.

COLD WILL BE THE SCREAMING MESSAGE FOR WEDNESDAY AS CURRENT STATISTICAL GUIDANCE IS ADVERTISING RECORD TO NEAR RECORD LOWS WEDNESDAY MORNING WITH DAYTIME HIGHS STRUGGLING  TO BREAK INTO THE SINGLE DIGITS MOST AREAS UNDER NORTHERLY ARCTIC  BLAST.

Yep, we made it out of River City in the nick of time.  Meanwhile...it's raining hard outside the straw house here at Montezuma Well.  The storm that's hitting Idaho is a giant system affecting sweeping sections of the entire Western US.  In this morning NWS composite map, the purple is a Winter Storm Warning and the blue is a Winter Weather Advisory.  That color off the coast means "Gale Warning."  (Click here for the actual webpage.) Seas in SOCAL are progged to exceed 20 feet today!  Yep, it's a "biggie." La Nina is flexing her legendary muscles.

(Historical note: When we read the NWS snippets shown IN CAPS above, we flashed back to October 18, just a little more than a month ago. In our blog post that day we said, "Meanwhile, we're betting Idaho Falls will see protracted periods of sub zero overnight lows with a stretch of daytime highs that never get above zero all day long!" Looks like it's gonna be a long, cold, wet winter up yonder. Click here to read that blog post.)