Rain, Rain, go away.

The Saturday afternoon, the Pacific Coast was struck by a dreaded 'Pineapple Express', a fancy TV friendly term for an 'Atmospheric River' that channels a continuous stream of warm, moist tropical air out of the tropic where it belongs, and deposits it in my neighborhood, where it doesn't belong. 

Western Washington has a reputation of being a rainy place.  That's somewhat of a false reputation.  What Western Washington IS is a gray place, where we frequently get days and days, AND days of drizzle.  From a total precipitation standpoint, Seattle gets 37.1 inches of rain a year, less than New York, Atlanta, or most of the rest of the Atlantic Seaboard. 

Over the last 36 hours, most of the Kitsap Peninsula, and North Mason County(where Belfair is) has received over 4 inches of rain.  In addition to the active rain, temperatures have been going up, raising snow levels, and with it, putting many rivers and creeks in Western Washington over their banks.  It made the first ten miles of my trip back to the Tri-Cities the hardest part, with there being several times that I ran into THIS:

This SHOULD have been the ramp leading from Route 3 to Route 16 in Gorst, but instead it was a pond.  The detour in this case was pretty basic, just having to go through a few parking lots. 

The rest of the drive to Snoqualmie Pass wasn't bad...rain the whole time, and a couple of big puddles that caught me by surprise, but traffic was moving good. 

Finally, I made it over the Pass, and about the time I made it to Cle Elum, the rain had faded to a trickle.  Another 30-40 miles, on I-82 between Umtanum and Manastash Ridge, the clouds broke, and for a while the sun came out:

Beautiful.  Enough snow still there to frost the hills...very nice.  I love this area.  When I first learned to hunt elk it was in the area, just a little further west, on the other side of the Yakima River.  I really like the area between Yakima and Ellensburg...it looks brown and sage brushy, but down in the valleys and along the northern facing ridges, there are some nice pine forests.  If I ever win the lottery, one of the place I would LOVE to have a house and piece of land is somewhere in a triangle formed by Cle Elum, Ellensburg and Yakima. 

An earlier start got my in earlier than usual, and also kept me from sitting around the house, full of melancholy.  Today, when I left the house in Belfair, it was my last time leaving it as my home.  Tuesday the movers pack, Wednesday they load, and Thursday, I will finally get to live with my wife and kids again, instead of just being a visitor.

I give it about 4 weeks(just past all the Holidays) before they are tired of me.