Boy Howdy.
You may or may not have heard about these Atmospheric Rivers we have been dealing with here in the Pacific NorthWest for over a week but I’m here to tell you that these things are no joke.
They come out of the SouthEast clear from over by New Zealand and just piledrive water, wind and seasonally warm temperatures right into the Pacific Northwest, relentlessly.
There is massive flooding going on North of me clear to British Columbia and it’s not supposed to stop until like this coming weekend.
Inches of rain, PER DAY and saturated soil means rivers going over full flood stage, dikes failing and entire valleys completely flooded from foothill to foothill along with the cities, towns and communities in them.
On top of that, there are Blizzards happening in the upper mountain passes with lots and lots of road closures.
Last night, The Winds hit.
And they hit hard around here. My buddy told me at work yesterday that they clocked a wind gust up on Mt. Hood at 138 miles an hour.
Here locally, the lights went out at 1:28 AM last night and they didn’t get power restored at my house for 12 hours.
My buddy lives up on a big hill just North of Washougal, about 20 miles east of here and he has 100 foot Fir trees all over his property. He sent me a picture of part of his yard after he got home yesterday afternoon showing the top of a huge Fir tree that had broken off and landed in his yard. Just the top, was 10 inches across and he got massively lucky because it landed IN BETWEEN his and his wife’s cars without toucjing either one of them.
The people up North of me, between here and the Seattle area, have been double and triple fucked by these storms with videos of entire houses and large barns floating down rivers. Some people have literally lost everything they own and there are massive mandatory evacuations up and down the Western part of the state.
Oregon didn’t excape unscathed and they have similar issues going on in some places down there, mainly closer to the coast.
It ain’t over by a long shot and this is going to go down in history as one of the greatest series of storms ever recorded.
If you are the praying kind, there are a few MILLION people who would certainly appreciate you saying a few for them.
By some stroke of luck, other than the power going out last night, we have so far remained relatively unscathed here.
I Thank God for sparing us that.