The weather here has turned from major distraction to major story. In Portland, snow of any kind is a rarity and snow before Christmas just doesn’t happen all that often. The city’s at sea level, locked between the coastal mountain range and the Cascades, so conditions have to be just right for the stuff coming down from the sky to be anything but rain.

But snow it is. Today marks the ninth day in a row we’ve had white stuff on the ground. Those five snow days that Portland area schools took off last week are nothing compared to what’s happened since then. To see how much it’s snowed since then, just compare the picture of my house above to the same scene one week ago.

It started snowing in earnest on Saturday, continued for the better part of the weekend and more is predicted through Christmas.

Outside my window it’s a picture perfect scene of white, houses and trees covered with up to a foot of snow in some places. But the weather is wrecking havoc on transportation in and out of the region. Airlines are canceling flights. Trains and buses aren’t running. Major highways are shut down and cars need chains to get around. This may be standard operating procedure for natives of the East Coast, where this is a more common occurrence. But in decades of living here, first as a child, and for the last five years, I can’t remember ever seeing this much snow.

The bad news: my college sophomore daughter is stuck in Denver, waiting for flights here to resume. The good news: we have power, the pantry’s stocked, the Christmas shopping is almost finished and I don’t have to commute to work. That’s fortunate, as I still have assignments to finish before taking a couple days off for the holiday. Unless you’re a firefighter or bus driver, Portland-based YourHRGuy.com says you really shouldn’t be driving to work in these conditions anyway, especially without chains.

What’s the weather like in your neck of the woods? Is it affecting your ability to get work done?

Here’s another scene taken not far from my home office:

UPDATE – Dec. 19, 2008 – It snowed all week. Five snow days in a row off school. More snow predicted to fall before Christmas. Running out of things to keep kids occupied. Someone suggested letting kids play with these online games for all ages.

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We interrupt our regularly scheduled program – because it’s a snow day – and I’m not just talking about the WordPress feature that lets snow fall over your blog.

It’s really snowing, as you can see from this picture of my front yard. Unlike the New England city it’s named after, Portland, Oregon, practically comes to a stand still if it snows more than an inch or two. That’s exactly what happened yesterday. Then it got even colder and everything iced over, making driving around the city and especially in the West Hills of town where I live pretty treacherous, like this road that passes right by my house:

The kids are overjoyed because it means no school. But I’ve got tons of writing to do. So how do I do what I’ve got to get done?

1. Get up before anyone else is awake and work like a mad woman.

2.  Forego my normal nagging about too much screen time.

3. Hole myself up in the office and ignore the chaos happening around me.

4. Try to accomplish as much as possible and if I think I won’t be able to make all my deadlines let editors know ahead of time.

If you write or do some other type of work from home, how do you handle snow days?