Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Elphaba
Rain, rain, and more rain. The dock is nearly under water, the Skok is flooding, and salmon are crossing the roads.
In other words...normal.
|
The Skok always floods...one raindrop and that thing is over its banks.
I think it's so funny--since I moved to Oregon, every time it rains hard people talk about the bad floods they've had down here. Well, while I admit there have been some bad floods (1996 comes to mind), there are parts of Washington where it floods damn near every year, or at least there is the fear that it will flood. Growing up in the Skagit Valley I saw both the Stillaguamish and Skagit (the third largest river on the West Coast) rivers go over their banks--the Stilly flooded my entire town (fortunately the road was built on about five feet of fill above the floodplain) and the Skagit covered Fir Island (where the legendary tulip fields of the valley are) in about four feet of water. And EVERY YEAR they fear that this will happen again (sometimes it does). Heck, I got flooded out one year when a combination of high tides and record rainfall pushed Utsalady Bay over the seawall. Here they have no concept of what floods really are.
Yet it is a real worry right now--we've had record rainfall here for the last week, storm drains are still clogged with leaves from the fall, and the rivers are looking fast and high. If it floods where I am, the Willamette will flood all of the land east of town. Hopefully it will not go over the cutoff road or the highway; if that happens I will not be able to get to work. C'est la vie. It's the risk of living where it rains so much
I just wish it were colder so we would be building up snowpack in the mountains.