This past September marked 10 years I have been living in Oregon and never have I seen so much snow fall in the valley before. I stuck a ruler on our table outback and it measured just under a foot of snow overnight! What a great time to have a hot tub! Read on…
As the snow was falling on Tuesday night I ran around the yard with my camera gear trying to capture the event as best I could. It’s not often it snows more than a few inches in Portland and with our new backyard I wanted to capture it all, including turning on our fire pit to add to the ambiance of the soft falling snow. Once I got a sufficient amount of photography time in I convinced Emily to join me in the hot tub under the falling snow. I couldn’t believe it actually took some encouragement! This was prime hot tubbin’ time! I even had the joy of being able to jump out and make a snow angel in my trunks then jump back in for that wonderful stinging’ feeling of a crisp snowy night!
In the morning I headed out into the snowfall to fly my Mavic Pro for some aerial shots of the city which had been completely shut down from the storm. Leo was super excited on his walk to be out in the white stuff, bounding around and simply stoked! I got some aerial shots of our house as well as flying up and down the street before heading out with the Leo in the truck to get some 360 degree video with the 360Fly as well as meet Tom who was cross country skiing around his neighborhood with Everett and his very pregnant wife Andrea. 
I met up with Tom at Arbor Lodge Park and got some great orbital shots of him skiing across the park and of Andrea and Everett at the playground. There were a ton of people out and about sledding and skiing in the streets as apparently everyone had been told to stay home from work, including Emily who spent the day working from home. After hanging out with the Spauls I took Leo home then went out driving around the city. It was absolute joy to be in my truck in the snow spinning around corners and basically rally racing around the streets of Portland until I would occasionally get stuck behind an extremely nervous driver. There was a ban on driving in the city unless you had 4x4 or chains. Portland doesn’t salt the roads so it would be nearly a week before it was all cleared up!
I headed out to St. Johns taking photos of people building snowmen in their front yards along the way. At the Arbor Lodge bluffs I found a guy with shorts and skis on about to drop down the steep slope so I pulled over and filmed him from above with the drone. He had a few good turns before crashing into blackberry bushes at the bottom which looked painful! I got some aerial shots of the city from there before continuing on to the St. Johns Bridge.
At the bridge I found a horde of people who had built up ski jumps on the steep hillside under the bridge.
I walked down the park towards the Willamette and took off to film the amazing St. Johns Bridge covered in snow. I flew out over the river and got some great panning shots of the bridge before I got some wind warnings from the drone and headed back over land. I was pushing my luck filming at just under 32 degrees and in windy conditions (not advised) but I really wanted to capture the snow storm as best I could from the sky. On the way home I stopped at Peninsular Park for some more aerial footage of the rose garden covered in snow before I was out of battery power and the temps dropped any further. 
The temperature stayed below zero for nearly a week and the snow was still on the ground by the time I headed to see Ellie for our Father-Daughter dance on the 19th. We would ultimately have 2 more ice storms for a total of about 5 major snow/ice storms in Portland for the winter of 2016/2017. Crazy!
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