Re: Got skunked today


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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Monday, February 01, 2010 at 02:07:29 :

In Reply to: Re: Got skunked today posted by Jerry in Idaho [64.139.238.43] on Monday, February 01, 2010 at 01:02:42 :

What saved us from a big flood this winter was that it never rained hard. When we had that zero-degree spell in October, and then again for even longer in December, I thought it might be like '96-'97 when the ground froze hard, then we got plenty of snow on top of it, and then heavy warm rain. For 2 days the snow just soaked up the snow, and the on the morning of the third I woke up to hear the creek roaring, and a torrent of mud running down the street. Creeks were running down the mountainsides everywhere, but the ground was still so hard you couldn't dig anywhere with a shovel to divert it. This year it's like all weather stopped back around Christmas. No wind, no rain, no sun, no snow. Just 35 degrees and light drizzle. On the coast they'd call that "perfect steelhead weather".

Hard to say what's going to happen next summer. People are starting to mention that it will be the 100th anniversary of the 1910 fires. For those outside the area, in 1910, 10 million acres in North Idaho burned, most of it in one 3-day firestorm. The irony is that the preceding winter had some of the heaviest snow on record. In March of 1910, a snow slide came down through heavy old-growth timber and swept a Great Northern passenger train off the tracks near Stevens Pass. It was the worst railroad wreck in American history. You can still see the stumps of the trees that were broken off by the Wellington slide.

If we get a good soaking rain once a month through the summer, we should be okay, but with such little snow, things will start drying out very early this year. All the rest of the world seems to be getting more cold and snow than usual this year -- Europe, China, and even India are getting frozen. The eastern US is getting lots of snow too. We seem to be in the only warm spot.

As for deciding not to go down into the canyon with all the ice on the road, I know I've escaped disaster by pure luck a good many times, and so just in case I've used it all up, I tend to not push my luck any more. On a road like that, I can very clearly envision every step of the process of sliding just a little too far, one wheel going over the edge, the truck starting to tilt, and then rolling through the brush then over the cliffs and crashing all the way down into the river. There's a point where the laws of physics take over and there's nothing to be done. Off by myself in a place like that, even if I miraculously survived the ride down, there'd be no way out and no one to find me, except the wolves, this time of year. So, I wasted a day and $60 in gas.



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