too early to call..

No, not the election - seasonal snowpack!

Looks good so far, but that's what cool air and an inch of snow can do. A few thousand percent of normal cannot last long in the Sawtooth mountains, nor can the snow-barrier between the Yakima and Cowlitz basins.

No snow yet, but we just had our first frost this morning - with a low reading of 31.8° it hardly counts but the car and outside fabrics show it's true. We're over seven inches & counting on October rain, two inches above normal. That means October keeps up with Sep as two months that have had no subnormal precipitation in the six-ish years we've lived here. 

On the Coronavirus front, no good news is news. Over 100k cases in Washington and it's doing well, and Cowlitz county is at 800 cases though only seven have died. Things could be far worse - and sadly they will be in a month or so; cases will likely reach 100k daily in the USA before election time. The "blue wave" shown in snowpack won't be reflected in eastern WA or Idaho, but the rest of the country? We shall see!

next wet spell approaches

 We're in October now, and average rainfall needs to be about an inch per week. The first week was .. whatever the opposite of a 'washout' might be. This weekend is expected to drop 1½" upon us though, so times are a-changing. October is definitely quick-change month around here, as highs in the 80s are replaced by those in the 50s - and no doubt the last week is the wettest on average anyway.

and away we go! 7-day forecast

The peaks will be white - for a few days at least, and just on the highest points. Snow season is still a month or so away, so the 'termination dust' will not amount to much. October's moisture is usually more sourced from tropical remnants from the west Pacific more than polar/Arctic air invasions.

post-script
Well that was fun. We overperformed, receiving over two inches on Saturday and slightly more on Sunday, making a 48-hour total (8pm Friday to Sunday) of about 4½". Another inch could arrive in the next 48h, then cooler and clearing for a few days. Mostly that means fog, but it will be nice to get out for a bit!

covid update

Here's the bottom of an interesting table. I sorted this by cases/100000 population and removed territories from the bottom of the list. It appears that the 'cold corners' are relatively good places to hang out, with the three uppermost New England states lowest and most of the PacNW nearly as low (except Idaho, which is having a surge right now). Conditions change quickly (just ask Idaho) but it's an interesting snapshot. 

One could add Alaska and Hawaii, but being adjacent only to Canada or water is a rather different case.

The two right-most columns are for deaths, total and per 100k. Those numbers are pretty low as well.

By the way - the 'warm corners' are suffering greatly. California tops the total-case list and suffers still from wildfires and smoke. Florida is in the top-five for cases as well, plus rising sea levels make things a misery in other ways at high tides.

a wet week

 The past seven days provided us with about 3½ inches of rain, so September has again beat the 30-year average by quite a bit. Sep/Oct have been the most consistently wet months since we arrived here, a definite change from my memories of Septembers in Portland. Amazing what an hour's drive (or a 30-minute crow flight) can do to conditions, with the Columbia gorge reduced in influence. The 'water year' shown here begins in July, so the long-time averages are 189% for September and 180% for October. September has doubled its average here three times, but the wettest-ever month was October 2016 at 366% - over twenty inches.

Note that August, November and May are the least efficient months on our hill-top, with fairly consistent underperformance relative to the 1981-2010 period. November is supposed to be our wettest month of the twelve, with 10.84" expected; it's reached that twice but failed badly twice; last year left a hole that needed a huge January managed to fill (over 18" total, second-wettest month on the list!). 

Averages are one thing, standard deviations quite another!

Rain? postscript

 It took a few days, but oh it came to us today /Friday. Two hours of powerful thunder in several directions, 1.08 inches of rain - and far better air quality than we'd seen since Labor Day. Definitely worth waiting for! 

rain? Yes please

As summer wanes and the jet stream reawakens, the dry days of our local summer begin to break down. Given our crazy smoke and fires of the past ten days, we'll gladly take the change! The map here shows the next week could bring us over an inch of rainfall, which along with the onshore flow will take the wildfires down several notches as they are forced back to areas that have already burned the available combustibles. The rain doesn't get much past the Cascades, and the jet stream will not  be visiting California soon - so for now only WA/OR will get the benefits.

Once the danger has passed I can finally cook on the grille outside, maybe even mow the dandelions!

Looks like our area gets a good soaking - until you see what TS/Hurricane Sally has in store for Louisana..

well now what's this?

 A happy surprise or two. 

The GX8 has arrived - and it isn't black. I expected a black in EX condition; this seems the right evaluation but a very shiny silvery shade of black! It's OK though, as I prefer this two-tone look, especially when the silver 20mm comes out to play; if they had labeled things right I'd have selected this copy anyway!

Here it sits with the new-to-itself Pentax 40mm XS lens. I seem to have sent off my relatively smart aperture-control adapter, but a hard rubber stop fits in the adapter and holds it at a preset opening (probably f/4ish). I've ordered another with the ap-control ring for sanity's sake.

With the 12-60mm lens it's a weather-compatible setup; with primes (including the 40) we have 8-20-40-60mm.. an adapted 90mm macro and 150mm*. That's a nice spacing.

* A Pentax 150/3.5 was just appended - did not expect that bid to hold up.