OREGON COAST - For a week and a half I was trapped in my Beaverton neighborhood due to that abominable snowstorm of ’08. Talk about claustrophobia. Besides the crummy food I was forced to endure and the lack of nightlife possibilities, for the better part of a month I was not able to get to the coast.

So when my schedule and the weather all finally cleared, I hightailed it for the central coast in the second weekend of January, finding temperatures warmer than my beloved P-town. I then spent the next week at my Manzanita pad and made a load of interesting finds that even blew my jaded, beachy mind.

One of the first stops was a fab tuna melt at Fathoms Restaurant (at the Inn at Spanish Head) in Lincoln City. It’s a Friday afternoon full of sun and rather astonishing warmth, as the waves are wild and wooly in spite of otherwise calm and pleasant weather.

Later in the day, Gleneden Beach poses beautifully as the waning sun makes a reddish cast on rather dramatic wave-cut sand bank erosion.

A full moon is erupting to the east, which is causing wondrous low tides and high tides on this lovely, but chilly, January day.

Later this night, I’m having dinner with a friend in nearby Kernville and the power suddenly goes out. It’s a calm, windless night with no clouds. Why it did this is anyone’s guess. In any case, we’re all forced to have dinner by candlelight. It’s quite engaging and atmospheric.

Saturday, Depoe Bay puts on a show as usual, with its Spouting Horn actually periodically spraying onto unsuspecting cars along Highway 101.

About 30 miles to the south of Depoe Bay, Seal Rock is smothered with agate hunters, busily picking clean the newly exposed bedrock, some 17 million years old.

From here, I drive some 180 miles back to Portland to bask in the lovely glow of no annoying snow and total road freedom.

By Tuesday, I’ve become anxious for more sea and sand, and Wednesday I zip over 26 to my beloved little pad in Manzanita. There, it’s some 10 degrees warmer than inland, with clear skies and copious sun.

On Thursday, at the overlooks above Manzanita, the calm, windless sea is visibly glass-like during this particularly stunning sunset, revealing curious patterns in the ocean that I believe are shallow reef areas, although I’ve admittedly never seen them before.

It’s another example of no matter how many times I loiter on the coast, I discover something new almost every time.

The tranquil and unruffled Nehalem River is particularly placid on Friday, which belies its wacky fury about a week before, as it threatened to flood the entire town.

Jeanne Wells, co-owner of Pizza Garden in Nehalem, is standing on the second step of the stairway to illustrate where the river came up to the previous week. Now, there’s nary a sign of the watery destruction in town. Of course, it thankfully turned out not nearly as bad as experts had predicted.

What a difference a week makes in Oregon coast weather.

A quick trip up north to Seaside on Friday reveals a town slowly swelling with tourists escaping for the three-day weekend and the exceptionally warm temperatures. The Promenade and the Seaside Aquarium are shown here in a moment bereft of the coming tourist onslaught, while the sky glowed in a most captivating way.

At Rockaway Beach, I discover a pleasant old friend: ghost forest stumps probably some 4,000 years old. These are like the ones at Neskowin or Seal Rock, but older and a much more rare sight. I haven’t seen these ones in two or three years. Literally, what a blast from the past.

It’s here where a standout example of the need for beach safety takes place. The sea is wild today, shooting massive surprise sneaker waves 50 feet up the beach without warning. There is a family a ways down the beach whose kids are sitting on a massive log, ignoring the surf that sometimes comes up to the log. Do NOT hang out around logs during times when the surf even comes close to them. They will get picked up and crush you.

I scream at the top of my lungs for them to get off, but I’m not sure they really hear me. I hear them screaming in fear as a sneaker wave surrounds them, and they finally get off the thing. Their parents were nearby the whole time.

It’s a dark way to illustrate this need for beach safety, but I thought to myself I almost made a bundle of money with my digital/video camera, had I been able to shoot video footage of three kids get crushed by a massive log in the wild surf. Unfortunately, I could’ve sold that one for thousands.

Don’t give people like me a reason to make money on things like that.

My favorite beach for ultimate repose and solitude has lately been Bayocean, some 30 miles south of Manzanita. It’s not unusual to find no one else here, as it’s still a bit of a secret to the world.

The sunset that begins here will yield an extraordinary discovery.

Yes, I actually get shots of the so-coveted Green Flash at Sunset.  Bayocean comes through for me in an incredible way. These are blown up considerably, showing quite a lot of grain.

First, you see the tiny remnant of the last of the sunset, still a discernible orange.

The next two shots show the disk disappearing - and obviously turning green. This is one of the major examples of how the green flash at sunset happens.

Essentially, this occurs because there’s so much atmosphere between you and the sun that just as it dips below the horizon, all the color bands except the green are cut out. This leaves only the green band to taint the last remnant of the sun.

Unknowingly, I actually caught this in Manzanita the night before as well. Only after I uploaded my photos onto my computer did I find the previous occurrence of the Green Flash.

I’m just lucky I guess. Of course, I already knew that: it is, after all, my job to go to the beach.

Andre' Hagestedt is the editor of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, a travel news and entertainment Web site about the upper half of Oregon’s coast. He has been a journalist for nearly 15 years, having been employed at or written for a variety of media organizations throughout the Northwest. He lives in Portland and in Manzanita part time, and admits he is "so obsessed with the Oregon coast that it's ready to take a restraining order out on him."