Weather Doom

From December 16-23rd the Puget Sound area was hit by successive snow storms followed by unusually cold air. It didn't drop anything like huge snow quantities, but each probably piled several inches each atop one another, bringing the area to a standstill.

Hard on the snow's heels are some ferocious rainstorms. It isn't that we're unused to rain here, but not like this. We've had eight inches in the past 36 hours or so, and temperatures that have warmed up to well above freezing in the mountains. This means mucho rain (10-20 inches) in the mountains that has also led to rapid snow melt, filling virtually every river in Western Washington.

The two pictures, downloaded from MyNorthwest.com, show the Puyallup River rising. Though I live on the hill and am not threatened by flooding, tens of thousands of residents were evacuated from the town of Orting, which lies between two flooding rivers-the Carbon and the Puyallup.