Sigh. It’s that time of year in the coastal NorthWET. Summer wasn’t sterling. Late August brought early foreshadowings of the rainy season. But on October 1, somebody flipped the rain switch.
We actually got a little break from 24-hour-a-day rain this week. Sun yesterday, even. Not until Thursday was the deluge due back — and due in a big, big way. But now Wunderground says forget today. That big solid blue band? That’s something well beyond a few days of unpleasant dog-walking.:
For this area, these are big, big rain totals. Unlike what you guys in the semi-tropics or the thunderstorm belt get, we’ll have rain that goes on forever but doesn’t amount to much in the weatherperson’s gauge. But this is atmospheric-river time. Those tropical fist-punches are slamming us again.
We’ve already had this one:
Now this one’s headed in — and won’t stop punching any time soon.
The new one, with those fat totals and high winds, is likely to bring mudslides and fallen trees.
Yeah, I know. This is just a little beyond what’s routine in these parts (though these pineapple express clobberings do seem to be increasing the last several years). But I can still whine about it, can’t I?
And you dear readers in southern Oregon or extreme northern California might get to whine even louder.
UPDATE: Our most trusted weather guru Cliff Mass says this next blow is not so normal. “Historic,” he says. Possibly. With potentially hurricane-level gusts on the coast. Going to go on for a long time, too. The storm striking us Saturday could be as strong as the strongest one ever recorded in the NW. A monster, Mass writes. His head is spinning, he confesses.
Of course, such things have been said before and (gasp) not been proven by reality. There is still a lot of uncertainty involving storm tracks and such. But we shall see and we shall whine. If I didn’t have a dog, I’d plan a week of cozy huddling.
Glad I just polished up the emergency supplies, too. More canned food. New batteries in the flashlights.
Yike. Different strokes, I guess. I remember a November in Michigan in which the sun never once shined – I mean I actually remember this specific November, even though it was close to 30 years ago, because it was that horrible. And that was without damaging storms, or any real drama at all. Just gloom, for weeks and weeks.
Each to his or her (zir?) own, I guess. Me, I’d go running back to the desert.
My kids got back to their home in Georgia, and there was no damage. Power was restored that evening.
The grandkids were like, “Do we have to have the lights on? We want to eat supper with flashlights.”
Apples don’t fall far from the tree.
Gads… living on the coast there could be not so fun… but my sister in So. Calif. will be glad if they get lots of rain. Well, until NEXT fire season, of course. They have a serious chicken and egg problem. Rain makes stuff grow, and the fall winds help it all burn up. sigh
Here in Wyoming, we’ve had our first hard frost and snow very early. May be an interesting winter, but we’re all pulling for lots and lots of snow. The forests here are dry. I suspect it will be colder this winter than many previous. I can’t ever remember needing to put heat on this early. The summer was so cool, however, that the logs never truly got warm, so there is that.
Good luck with the storms, Claire, and the rain. Maybe you can find a mall or shopping center with a sheltered area to walk the dogs? Glad I can just open the front door and let Laddie out to walk himself inside the fence. š
I’m overlooking the Pacific on a hill in a house built on rock here in the NW corner, most every year we see winds hit into the 80 mile area once or twice a year, makes me tie down the BBQ on the top deck for sure.
The new pup may still get walked but not in the forest where a tree limb can crack me in the head. Our new project (a Great Pyrenees/Anatolian Shepherd mixed, 5 months/70#) has to get outdoors or there may be no house to live in; it will be either the storm indoors or the one outside to consider which means we will be looking for the breaks and utilizing them as they come.
We had our first frost last night but the rain should at least warm things up a bit.
Our power comes in underground along with our gas too so we normally aren’t as negatively impacted on power as a lot in the area with the high winds. But we do have generators ready to go when needed, that’s reminds me I do need to filled up some additional Jerry cans today for sure.
One other thing about the link;
No on I-732, in the very strongest terms!
“Our new project (a Great Pyrenees/Anatolian Shepherd mixed, 5 months/70#) has to get outdoors or there may be no house to live in; it will be either the storm indoors or the one outside to consider”
Oh, I do hear that!
Although Ava is smaller and past the El Destructo stage, she’s relentlessly restless and goes crazy if not taken out for long walks twice a day. She doesn’t wreck the house, but she stares at me guilt-trippingly and does her best to keep me from accomplishing anything.
“Maybe you can find a mall or shopping center with a sheltered area to walk the dogs?”
A mall or shopping center, MamaLiberty? Methinks you forget where I live.
LOL! I really don’t have a good picture of where you live. My mental image is of a fairly typical town with those things in it. We don’t have anything like that here either.
One of my neighbors here drives his truck slowly down the road each day… with the dog running beside it. At the bottom of the hill, he lets the dog get into the truck bed and they come back this way. The dog is a BIG pit type, and is about the happiest dog I ever saw. š
Don’t suppose that would work for Ava.
I would absolutely love to do that with Ava especially on rainy days or days I’m not feeling ambitious. And she’d love to do it. Unfortunately, two words stand between us and happy vehicle-based dog walking: Tire biter.
Ava would end up with her face flattened under the wheels of Old Blue in no time. I’ve tried speeding up to keep her away from the spinning wheels, but she’s fast enough that it’s unsafe to drive at sufficient speed to keep her safe from getting crushed.
Oh me… Problem child for sure. Had one tire biter dog. We went through quite a few bicycle tire tubes, and one on a wheelbarrow. Big Rottweiler/black lab mix. Also socks and underwear… preferably dirty. I wound up with a sawed off 55 gal drum as a dirty laundry hamper. š
I know a lady with a dog that’s an unendurable bundle of energy until she’s had it exercised out of her. (The dog, not the lady.) She (the lady, not the dog) makes the dog tow her bicycle every day. That works great, once the dog got the idea.
Wouldn’t get you out of the rain, though. So maybe not a relevant idea.
Im dreading power loss – not home-wise as im ready there – but work wise. I work in the meat department, and if the power goes out we go into emergency mode and have to pull the shelves and get it in the big walk-ins fast. All the meats, prepackaged deli, then onto the dairy area and do the same and lastly, we have to do produce for the stuff that should be kept chilled. Then it all has to go back out when the powers back on and temps stabilize. With that, we still loose a good amount of product. If it lasts too long, the walk-ins will over temp and we loose it all. With that were insured, but for the other one we have to eat the losses.
Ah, so that is why we are having such a wonderful October. Our usual hurricane with rain all went south of us.
You are welcome to our usual October. I think our record was like three feet of rain in October, but when we get 14 feet a year, well, October is just usually the worst of the bad months.
I suspect the weather pattern will soon return to normal, and when it does, you can rejoice that you don’t live in Southern Southeast Alaska.
Coyote Hubbard — Ugh. That sounds like both an unpleasant task and a big, messy risk. Hope the storms aren’t as bad as predicted. From what I hear tonight, consensus among weatherpersons is that the Saturday storm has about a 1-in-3 chance of being historymaking. And not in a good way.
Joel, I do believe I’ve heard stories about that high-energy dog. And what a good idea. I’ve thought about hitching Ava to a sled or a dog cart or something. She’s a bit old for that now, but I think she could still use it. Furrydoc, who used to race sled dogs, once offered me her harnesses, only half kidding.
“You are welcome to our usual October. I think our record was like three feet of rain in October, but when we get 14 feet a year, well, October is just usually the worst of the bad months.”
Yikes, Haverwilde. You are certainly welcome to have “your” weather back! Any old time you’re ready for it, thank you.
Here, I’ve seen as much as 28 inches of rain in October, but that was an exceptionally wet year — awful year. The high hills around here can get 12 or 13 feet of rain, but we in the lowlands usually settle for eight or nine feet annually.
I bow to your superior weather stats. Now please take all this incoming rain and run on home with it. š
Here in extreme SW right on the coast Oregon, historic is the word they’re using too. Comparing it to the great deluge of ’62, which was only slightly lesser than the great flood of ’64.
2 days of rain coming before the storm on Saturday. Calling for super high wind, sustained for a day or more, vicious ocean conditions, land slides, roads disappearing, trees toppling, all the good stuff.
It’s our first big west coast storm, and our first biggie since we got Sandy’d, so we’re kinda looking fw to it. Our road was blocked for 5 days and our power was out for 17 after Sandy. It was a pretty awesome prep test. Let you know afterwards how it goes here.
Good luck, jw. ’62 was a whopper-plus (http://www.kiro7.com/news/a-look-at-one-of-the-most-infamous-windstorms-in-northwest-history/456475747). And where I was Ought-Seven was even worse. I’m hoping for extremely NON-historic weather for all of us. Maybe just enough thrills and chills to look out our windows from inside our cozy, power-on houses and go “wow.”
Update from meteorologist Cliff Mass:
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/10/storm-update.html
Today & tomorrow’s storm: milder than anticipated. Saturday’s storm will be coming in later than originally predicted; perhaps not historic but still “remarkably intense for our region” and very dangerous — though much still remains unknown.
Mass tends to focus on the Puget Sound, so anybody outside that area should check other sources. The coasts tend to get hit worst with these things but get the least attention because that’s not where the population is in the NW.
Sitting here in northern Kitsap this ‘historic’ storm has been a bit of a bust
Not that I am complaining!
Still, we added to supplies, and checked preps, so all to the good.