Saturation

In the first 12 days of January, we have had 7 1/2 inches of rain up here on the hill, according to the rain gauge on my back porch (which my parents sent me soon after I moved to Seattle). Add another 6 inches from December (most of that in the last two weeks of that month), and we have a truly wet winter on our hands.

The situation out here is serious but not critical. There have been mudslides and foundations threatened and overflowing banks and sandbags and submerged docks in the Puget Sound area. Closer to home, the Panther lake has spread out as far as the road, but thanks to some irrigation work, has yet to spill over the asphalt. The house itself is doing well (touch wood) save for more branches coming down. We're on pretty stable, level ground, high up, and not near the edge of any large drop-offs.

There is a lot of talk about records right now, particularly one in the 30s for 30-some days of rain. Those of us who remember a 91-day period of daily rain would quibble, but there is a difference between the two records. The long previous period of rain was pretty much Seattle Rain - overcast and a little drizzly, getting harder in the evenings. A very pleasant rain. This current spate has been hard and continual, and midwestern-style rain of heavy drops. And with the ground totally saturated, it is running off as flooding.

Seattlites are notorious for favoring the wet, and through the long, clear high summers, the continual blue skies actually makes them a little twitchy. But I think even our most hard-core precipiphiles are nearing the end of their tether, and ready for a few mountain days.

More later,