Saturday, December 11, 2010

Rain


It has been raining pretty heavily all week, with something of a break yesterday, and a torrential downpour predicted for today. The weather service had issued flood warnings- warm temps and rising freezing levels combined with rain do awful things to the mountain snowpack, namely. send it raging toward the valleys.

It has barely been drizzling today, though it has been raining heavily further north, and I understand Portland is having problems with street flooding and blocked drains.

I have mixed feelings about this: I enjoy vigorous weather, and we don't get all that much of it here in western Oregon. On the other hand, floods can be a royal pain, or much worse. Probably the greatest danger in my neighborhood comes from landslides and debris flows. While here on the valley floor such mass movement isn't an issue, you don't have to go far from where I'm sitting to find places where it would be a serious concern and real danger. And it's not as if, as I said earlier, we have been particularly lacking in the precipitation department recently.

Still, I had my expectations for a roaring downpour, and I can't help but feel a little disappointed. I have a feeling that Randall Munroe at xkcd can relate.

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