My wife and I opted to spend a quiet Thanksgiving holiday together this year.

We rented a nice little Airbnb in Central Oregon and looked forward to exploring the area, maybe going on a couple of hikes and so forth. I have spent a great deal of time over there and I never get tired of the juniper and sage smell in the air. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had different plans this year.

“#Bombogensis” is what the folks from the National Weather Service were calling the storm building over the Pacific, just off the coast of northern California and southern Oregon in the days before Thanksgiving.

It refers to the development of a “bomb cyclone,” a weather pattern that occurs when the air pressure drops 24 millibars or more in a 24-hour period, and this one dropped almost 40 millibars.

I kept tabs on the weather daily as we planned to leave that Tuesday morning and I was getting a little worried about our drive over the Santiam pass. As it turned out, I did white-knuckle it for 35 miles, the fresh powder snow driven by high winds in the higher altitudes created frequent whiteouts and I struggled to see the road in front of me.

Thanks to a new set of snow tires on the all-wheel drive Volvo, we arrived safe at our destination and spent several snow-filled days just east of the Cascades.

While watching the news later that week and the intense winds that came along with the storm, I couldn’t help but remember the storm of 2007 that knocked out power and blew down trees around our area.

It was 12 years ago this month that we opened up the Bob Chisholm Community Center to the public, thanks to a generator loaned to us by the National Guard out of Camp Rilea.

We cooked well over 6,000 meals that week with food donated by local restaurants to help feed Seaside residents who were without power. Our park district staff manned the kitchen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The local Red Cross handed out blankets and other supplies as well. It was a true community effort to make sure our residents were warm, safe, and didn’t go hungry.

Our local ham radio operators made sure we could maintain communications with the governor’s office in Salem and if you were lucky, there was a spot out near the Cove where you could get one bar of cell service and contact family outside the area to let them know you were safe. It was an experience I will not soon forget and I am glad that our community center was able to serve Seaside residents in the capacity it did.

I certainly hope that we don’t ever have to deal with another bomb cycline and the devastation it brings with it, but if it does happen, I am thankful for such a great community, one that pulls together to care for its residents the way Seaside does!

Every month, The BOB will bring you information on current events and items of interest here at the center. See you next month!