Wait - Where are those Plans for the Ark?

I know I'm a couple of days late with this post, but life hasn't stopped.... more on that later.



This past weekend was a CRAZY one for us here in Western Washington.



It started on Saturday. We woke up to snow. It doesn't snow very much here, so it's kind of exciting to see it. All told we got about 2", but it rained in the middle of that, so we would have had more. Here's a picture of the trees behind our house. They look aweful pretty.

Sunday dawns to a bit more snow. Here is Western Washington, people aren't used to snow. Plus it's really hilly, so the roads can be dangerous. (Although everyone they talked to on the news said, "I can drive in it, I'm just afraid of everyone else driving in it." Seriously, everyone isn't good at driving in it and I'm pretty sure all those people were just fooling themselves.) Brent had meetings at church at 10a, so he started to leave at 9:30 when the phone rings. On the other end of the line is one of the bishopric saying that they're not going to meet until 10:30 and if he doesn't feel comfortable driving, he doesn't have to come. (This member of the bishopric is from here and so is naturally afraid of the snow.) Brent hangs up the phone and makes a snorting noise. He says, "I can get to the church because 1) I have a 4 wheel drive truck and 2) I can drive in the snow and 3) it's only slushy out there." He's so funny.

So, off to church Brent goes. Last year there was a day similar to this when they did cancel church. Apparently during bishopric meeting, the bishop asked each person there if they would be uncomfortable having their wives drive in this weather. When Brent told me the story, this is how it went:

Bishop: What about you Brother Linton?

Brent: She'll be fine.

Wow, there's a lot of love and caring in those 3 little words. When I was bugging Brent about the conversation later, he ammended his answer to the following:

Brent: Ashley's a good driver, she knows how to drive in the snow, so I'm not worried about her driving here to church.

I personally think the first one is closer to what he said.

Anyway, I kept waiting for Brent to call and say that church was canceled. But, the call never came so I went over there. The other two wards in our building had canceled, so we were the only tough ones that day. By that time it was raining and the roads really were just slushy, but I learned something that day. If you're the only ward in the building, it's really quiet!

We get home from church and are fixing dinner and hoping that the power won't go out. The wind had kicked up at this time and whenever there is wind there are power outages. Our power went out just after dinner - luckily - but then came back on after only a few minutes. We were happy. I mean, I would have missed Amazing Race.

By the end of Sunday, it had started to rain....and rain...and rain.

Monday dawns to some SERIOUS downpours! People are starting to worry about flooding. I'm starting to worry that it's never going to stop. I took a video of the rain from our back deck. You can't see if very well, but you can really hear it. It did this for nearly the whole day.

So, in 48 hours, we got 13" of rain. For those of you who are visual learners like me, that's 13 FEET of snow in a 2 day period. It was INSANE!

Every river in Western Washington flooded. There was just no place else for the water to go. There are sinkholes EVERYWHERE - including over by our post office. In Grays Harbor County, there were 36,000 people without power and you couldn't get to the city of Auburn at all! ALL THE ROADS WERE BLOCKED! Either by downed trees or mud slides. The city of Tahuya was completely cut off when the bridge was taken out. About 1 miles of I-5 was completely underwater - about 10 feet on Monday. Now it's down to 4 feet. Getting better. The detour for that 1 mile stretch of highway is over 400 miles. It is INSANE! There were pictures on the news of salmon swimming up the street. And, Gorst, which I've complained about before was completely underwater thereby cutting Port Orchard off from Bremerton. Luckily, they kept the foot ferries going so Brent had someway to get home.

It was a CRAZY DAY!

Here's the best part. We got through it ok. On Tuesday, our garage was a little damp, but I'm pretty sure most of that was from the cars. We didn't have any flooding and we didn't lose power. I had to finally stop watching the news because it was making me sad. A lot of people have loss their homes or at least, they have to do a lot of clean up. We were blessed!

Once again, this was a pineapple express weather system. What do the Hawaiian Islands have against us?

Hope the weather isn't as crazy where you are. It's definitely dried off here, but we did get another inch of rain on Tuesday. I think we might be in for it this winter.

Have a great day!