Crazy Northwest Weather

I've always felt rather fortunate to live in the Northwest because we don't have to deal with hurricanes, earthquakes (at least not too often), or sub-zero temperatures. Or scorpians, cockroaches, or really big insects. I just had to add that too.

However, we do have our faults. We have volcanoes, lots of rain, and we totally could have a tsunami or tidal waves. Those are all very uncommon though.

What we DO deal with every winter is extreme windstorms and flooding.

I thought it would be interesting to show you Snoqualmie Falls, which is about 10 miles from our house.

This is how Snoqualmie falls normally looks:

And then this is what it has looked like this past week due to massive record-breaking flooding:

This picture is of the lookout cabana. The falls was definitely an exciting thing to see with all of the powerful water rushing over it this past week. You can also see the mist rising up from the falls.

This picture is looking up at the falls.

Snoqualmie River was 8 feet above flood levels a couple of days ago. It broke all records.

Luckily we live on a hill and so we were not effected by the flooding.

This last picture is of Snoqualmie Pass and how it normally looks during ski season.

If you remember my recent blog post about our roadtrip ("Car Perspective"), the pictures at the end with all of the snow and trees was Snoqualmie Pass. It is about 45 miles outside of Seattle and on our way home.

Due to the high temperatures and melting snow, this is what happened a few days ago at the ski resort:

A huge mudslide avalanche. It knocked out a lot of the cabins, and destroyed some the ski resort.

The pass was closed for several days. A lot of people were stuck on either side of the mountains due to this. I-90 is the major connecting highway between Seattle and the eastside of the state.

All of this was caused due to heavy snowfall between Dec. 19th - Jan. 1st. Then between Jan. 5 - 8th tempertures went up to around 50 degrees or higher, thus causing much of the snow to melt in the mountains.

It's been crazy wet here. It all reminds me of a primary song...

The wise man built his house upon the rock
The wise man built his house upon the rock
The wise man built his house upon the rock
And the rain came tumbling down

Oh, the rain came down
And the floods came up
The rain came down
And the floods came up
The rain came down
And the floods came up
And the house on the rock stood firm.

The foolish man built his house upon the sand
The foolish man built his house upon the sand
The foolish man built his house upon the sand
And the rain came tumbling down

Oh, the rain came down
And the floods came up
The rain came down
And the floods came up
The rain came down
And the floods came up
And the foolish man's house went "splat!"

Although, if you live in Washington, if you build your house upon the rock, a big avalanche could knock it out. LOL