We live in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. We are also above 1000′ elevation. Our weather patterns differ from what happens in the valley. We average about 6° colder than our closest city and get more wind & rain.

Rain. That’s what I want to know. How much rain do we get. It seems like a lot. Some days it totally bums me out, but I love how lush and green the forest we call home is, so I’ll tolerate it.

Portland receives an average of 35″ – 40″ of rain annually. Temperate rain forests receive 55″ or more of rain. I’m going to take a wild guess and say we typically reach those 55″. A few hours north of us is the Olympic National Park in Washington. They get 140″+ of rain annually. I’m also going to take a guess and say we don’t get quite that much. My guesstimate is we will get somewhere between 60″ and 80″ of rain in 2017.

Farmer John put up a new weather station the evening of December 31st, so we were ready to start the new year collecting data. Woop, woop!

Here is what we have so far:

2017 Rainfall

2017 Rain Total: 154.63″

January: 12.12″ ( +22.5″ snow)
February: 30.18″ (+12.75″ snow)
March: 28.49″ (+7.5″ snow)
April: 15.45″
May: 7.16″
June: 3.28″
July: 0.01″
August: 0.34″
September: 5.02″
October: 15.06″
November: 25.54″
December: 11.98″ (+2.5″ snow)

January 2018 update: Apparently I was off on my guesstimate – by nearly half. We ended up with 154″ of rain in 2017. I knew we got a lot, but I didn’t know it would be that much. Maybe it was a really wet year? I will be keeping track in 2018 to compare.

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The weather forecast is getting predictable. Rain. Followed by rain. And more rain.

This December is officially the wettest month in 75 years. That’s sayin’ a lot since we live in Oregon. And, the month isn’t even over yet. We still have over a week left in December.

After such a dry summer, a little rain is nice. But, we’ve had enough now. I’d like at least a day or two of feeding the critters without coming back in looking and feeling like a drowned rat.

I took a screen shot of the forecast pinpointed at our house about a week into the rainy days. Some days the rain has been accentuated with wind. Lots of wind. Thankfully, our power has only gone out once during this crazy weather.

We’ve had numerous flood watches and warnings, as well. It’s been rough for many people due to flooding. Our friend’s driveway had water knee deep. Since we are near the top of a ridge, flooding at our home isn’t a problem. Our only issue is getting to town sometimes when there is flooding across the road in the lower areas coming off our hill.

For three weeks now this has been the view out our kitchen window.

The little birds search for food even in the downpours.
Left: Dark-eyed Junco
Right: Song Sparrow

The rain hasn’t seemed to bother the ducks much. But, I wonder if they’ve had to spend more time preening to stay dry. Ducks have a gland that produces oil. They rub the oil over their feathers for a waterproof effect.

Our ducks have spent a lot of time lately preening, bathing and drinking the water collecting on our new patio.

Tonight’s forecast includes a Winter Storm Warning. We’re in an iffy zone weather wise. We could get 1 – 2 feet of snow, or we could get nothin’. It would be awesome, though, if it actually did snow on Christmas. We don’t get many white Christmas’s around here.

I’m not really complaining about all the exciting weather we’ve been having. Thankfully, we’ve had very few problems. I’m simply getting tired of the wet gloominess day after day.

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Most of August was warm, dry & uneventful. However, one night there was a fantastic lightning show that I really could have enjoyed had I not been so nervous about the trees around our house catching on fire. Here in the PNW we get thunder & lightning. But no real great show. It lasts a few minutes and moves on. This time it went on strike after strike for a couple hours straight. I spent those couple hours in awe of nature’s wonders, but also running through my mind the course of events that needed to happen when/if I notice something catch fire. Thankfully, there wasn’t a fire.

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I didn’t name this winter weather event. The media has dubbed these last few days as Snowpocalypse 2014. Geesh.

Why? Because throughout the Willamette Valley down to Salem, and even parts of the coast got 6+ inches of snow & freezing rain. That’s rare. We will get that much at our house usually a couple times a year. But, we are at a higher elevation. All the schools were closed on Friday. An alert was sent out to people’s phones this morning about not driving because of the icy conditions. And, most schools are staying closed tomorrow. I have heard the roads have been treacherous. Personally, I haven’t gone anywhere to find out for myself. All our weekend activities were canceled, so we’ve been chillin’ at home. And, I’m loving it!

Thursday morning started like this:

Saturday afternoon looked like this.
Although this is plenty of snow, it’s not as much as I would have expected for it snowing most of the last 3 days. We ended up with a little over a foot. We were getting itty-bitty snowflakes. This made for fabulously powdery snow that didn’t accumulate too fast. Our high on Thursday was 16°. I’m guessing the colder weather caused smaller snowflakes.

Left: Our chocolate lab didn’t seem to mind the snow.
Right: Looking out a downstairs window. I dumped bird seed on our front porch railing. There have been 20-30 birds hanging out here most of the weekend.

Feeding ducks & chickens needs done in snow, too.

Top Left: The coops all nestled in their blanket of snow.
Top Right: The chickens staying as far away from the white stuff as they can.
Middle Left: Friday’s eggs. I’m happy the cold hasn’t turned off their egg production.
Bottom Right: The ducks didn’t seem to mind the snow.

Chicken coops at the break of dawn this morning.

It got above freezing this afternoon & the snow started to melt. It slid off the coop roof in such a cool way. Somehow it stayed in this curved position all by itself.

Left: Of course we played in the snow.
Right: Only on good snow days do we sled down this hill. We went both yesterday & today. The sledding was great!

Left: I asked my daughter if she wanted to dress up, wear makeup & I’d take her picture. She said yes, both today & yesterday. This girl likes dressing up, looks for any excuse to wear makeup & is a ham for the camera. This group of photos was her as a fairy under the alder arches Farmer John made a couple years ago.
Right: Another group of pics was her in my wedding dress out in the snow.

Warmer weather is here to stay, so the snow should melt fairly quickly & we will have to resume our never ending duties of work, school & kid activities.

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I’ve had my DSLR camera for over a year & haven’t tried taking star pics. A few nights in the last couple weeks I finally gave it a shot. I’m not sure I got exactly what I was looking for, but I did learn a few things. The most important thing I learned is that star photography is tricky. The shutter needs to be open awhile to let in enough light for the stars to show up. Yet, if you leave the shutter open longer than 10 – 15 seconds the stars are no longer round objects, but start to get streaky. And, not the cool streaky look from extremely long exposures, but an out of focus, not pretty photo. I took moon pics, too, & found them to be my fav’s.

I probably should have stayed up until the wee hours of the morning waiting for the moon to go down, so I could get the stars in complete darkness. I’ll have to try that next time.

Even if I didn’t get the shot I was looking for, the night sky has been beautiful this month.

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On June 5th, Venus crossed between the Sun & Earth for the last time in our lifetime. I was home that afternoon & was determined to snap a few pics. It turned out to be a huge pain. I thought ahead to pick up solar glasses so we could look at it, but I didn’t think about a way to photograph it. So, I googled it & found out I could use a No. 14 welders glass filter. Farmer John has a welders mask & he gave me the glass – although, it wasn’t quite a No. 14. It didn’t work great, but was better than nothing. I also tried holding the solar glasses up to the lens & trying out a variety of other items as filters. These pics are a mix-match of a variety of make shift filters & using both my cameras. I wish the sun was not just a bright white circle in the photos, but at least I can see the tiny black dot that is Venus.

THE SUN & VENUS

Top Left: 4:40 pm. This was the first photo where I was able to work out all the kinks & actually see Venus.
Top Right: 5:10 pm
Middle Left: 6:15 pm
Middle Right: 6:32 pm
Bottom Left: 8:38pm. Not only is Venus about to go passed the sun, the sun is about to go behind the mountain.
Bottom Right: 8:40 pm. The sun & Venus have now gone behind the trees. Show’s over.

MORE SKY PICS FROM THAT DAY

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