Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Inexact Science

While Taoism may be an inexact philosophy, predicting the weather is an inexact science!! When I posted last, our area was being pummeled by gale force winds and rain. The rest of the night looked to be a wild ride and the prediction was that it would last until midday today. So much for predictions!

I awoke at 8:30 a.m. to partly sunny skies and no wind to speak of. In fact, by midnight last night the winds had already dropped by several notches, though the rain kept coming down in torrents. We finished our Monday with 3.25" inches of the wet stuff and, as it now stands with several more storms lined up to slam into us for the next week or so, we've accumulated 13.04" for the month to date.

Normal rain totals for the entire 30 days of November is 12.67". As you can readily see, we're already above that and there are two weeks left in the month! It won't surprise me in the least if we end up over 20" when all is said and done. But hey, it is autumn and this is the southwest Washington coast. Copious amounts of rain are to be expected.

Officially, the highest wind gust reported in South Bend was a meager 44 mph. Our weather station is located at our elementary school in a sheltered area of town. Della & I live on one of the two large hills that bracket the town and, since we're on the western most hill (the ocean side), we typically see much stronger winds that they do down below.

Tokeland, which is at the mouth of Willapa Bay on the north side, clocked a gust as high as 77 mph. To our north, Hoquiam and Ocean Shores both clocked winds near 70 and Long Beach, in the south portion of Pacific County, clocked wind speeds in the 60s.

Another storm predicted to pack winds of 60 mph and more is expected to make landfall on Thursday. So, if it pans out, we get two days of respite from the wind, but NOT the rain.

Well, that's my weather report for now. Hopefully, now that the excitement has died down, I can get back to writing about Wen Tzu. ;>)

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