flipping out

Kit mutation alert!

As I had planned but failed to execute three months ago, the 2021 kit will be big Oly/small Lumi. I ordered a used E∙M1b with 12k clicks a flash and 3 batteries, and a GX7b with its original accoutrements. The GX8 and ePL8 will now be going to more appreciative folks, and boxes of 'b's or 'ii's are coming soon :^)

Somehow, somewhere, this all makes sense. Sure it does.

What did I gain with this flip??  -  Good question! Let me see if it can be described in more detail.

In either case I have one small body with (my preferred) tilt touchscreen, and one high-end 20Mpx body with more capabilities, more inch³ for buttons and switches, and moisture seals. Going with the GX7.ii /gx85 I gain faster autofocus with DFD compared to the ePL8, I get the 4k features that allows the GX8 to depart, and I get charging via USB. This last has become a priority with both gx8 and epl8 dying at bad times recently; the gx7.ii has a short battery life but is absurdly easy to charge in the car, at home, or with the solar power-bank that I recently acquired. That will help - or at least it should, time will truly tell. On the down-ish side I lose the dedicated EV± from the GX8 (which I didn't like) and the AF/MF switch (which I will have to spend a precious button to replace).

superimposed, from camerasize.com

With the eM1.ii I get similar features to the GX8 - most of which I like, though the flipout screen is on both :^(. The 4k-photo features now descend to the smaller gx7.ii, and the eM1.ii takes over from the ePL8 with Oly's live time / composite features. Beyond that is a huge set of new features: top-notch sensor stabilization with stills and video, multi-shot hi resolution images, a different set of 4k video options, custom autofocus limiter (in body not lens!), and 400+ images per battery charge plus sleep modes and a possibility to add a battery grip.

Given the recent eM1.ii price drops on the used side, it's less of a reach than it was - but that assumes I can sell the two departing cameras at decent prices. Just before posting them, two others posted GX8 bodies to the virtual market, so I'll be dangling my bait in a different pond until at least one of those is gone. Inevitably this will (had better) make sense!

November begins

 Time change, Halloween and a Blue Moon all fell this weekend, with Election Day immediately after. And then - the storms!

The jet stream that favored us with a few nice days has brought cool sunshine to us. At election time it goes zonal, bringing storms straight into our area. Looks like three inches in seven days, and given that the first two are dry that's pretty impressive. Not much snow from zonal flow in November, but it's a rare year when Thanksgiving finds any ski areas open so this counts as normal.

November has been a curious month around here for precipitation. The 30-year average has this as the wettest month, twice the amount of October and a bit more than December - yet we've had several dry ones. Last year was exceptionally dry at 25% of average, and the year before was also dry. This looks like the right start for a normal November, but things can turn quickly here. 

Time will tell its tale at the usual pace..

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!