Winter is the Wet Time

Indeed it does rain frequently here, but it seldom rains hard. This leads to the dearth of umbrellas. Folks mostly just spend their time out in the usually gentle rain the same way folks in the south spend time in the cold - short and with purpose.

This means that it is not uncommon (although you can't count on it happening) to have some period of the day with a little actual sunshine. Today we explore the remains of the rain.

Turns out that one the things that people fear here is trees. Because it rains constantly even if gently, the soil holding a tree can be quite soft and trees will pretty easily fall over ... on cars, houses, or streets.

We had a bit of blustery rain storm the other night when it did, in fact, rain hard and there were some still winds. As a result, a tree fell on a neighbor's house. This is bad. But what makes it worse is that this same house had a tree fall on it a couple years ago.

Hence, there has been lots of activity in trees this week as arborists have been called in to remove not only the offending tree(s) but also other quite tall ones (100 ft or more) that could be potential problems in the future.

Unlike drought, tornados, hurricanes, and floods, trees that fall because the soil is soaked is something that we can preemptively do something about. So, when you visit the PNW, be careful about parking under trees.