Rain Again

We've had this cool weather station set up since April this year, it was our anniversary present to ourselves. And it hadn't gotten much of a workout besides telling us how darn hot it was this year. But this past weekend, we found out it has an actual sense of humor. "It's raining cats n dogs." Indeed.

There was a lot of rain forecasted, the media is using new terms like atmospheric river, and bomb cyclone. But it turned out to just be a rain storm "just like we used to have." We've missed having rainstorms like this, really and truly, it was just part of life and part of the fun of living in the mountains. A bit of an adventure or whatever. But now, there's the worry of the steep mountainsides that burned in the fire coming down in a debris flow with too much rain at once. That means evacuation orders or warnings for a lot of people in our town. Not us, thankfully, as our home is on the other side of the highway and river. 

We did all the usual things to prepare, put away the outdoor cushions, took down the sun shades we put up for the summer, tarped up equipment, cut some firewood, cleared our drainage ditches, that sort of thing. Then we hunkered down inside, nice and cozy and hoped for the best. We expected to lose power, but we only did very briefly. Our neighbors down the street are out though, they are on a different power transmission line that we are. 

It's fun having the weather station, our total for the storm of 7.47" was a little less than some of the other measurements in our town that I've seen, but I think the spot where our station is located is a bit protected from rain (and wind too).  It's remarkable to me that on October 3rd, it was 100F, and we hadn't had any rain at all since April 25th. It's been a long, hot, dry summer, and all this rain is so very welcome.

As I woke up this morning, it was absolutely pouring, at an inch an hour rate according to the weather station. And then it stopped as the sun rose higher. Then this was the view out our front door. Pshew, we made it. No big slides happened, our power stayed on (?!?), and the roads are mostly open. I'm glad that our county is playing it safe and issuing evacuation orders, just in case, but it's going to get old for the people affected, especially as they aren't providing vouchers for housing like they did during the fire evacuation. We had a bad slide back in 1982, and ten people were buried in their homes in mud. And that was without a burn scar on steep hillsides, just an epic amount of rain. I expect that if we continue to have normal rainstorms, the just-in-case evacuations will continue.

Enough about the weather, back to getting some sewing done!