Wind, Snow and Flooding Oh My!

I'm writing this post on both of my blogs, so if you read both, so sorry for the duplication!:)

I have been unable to update on both horses due to a myriad of circumstances, the least of which is the busy schedule I've had in this Holiday Season including Christmas Parties (a party each day of the weekend for the last three weekends), Pet Sits (it IS the time of year that people go visit family, or run away from it if thats your thing), and of course caring for my two ponies and my home.

In addition to all the normal goings-on that we endure during this beautiful time of year, is the lovely weather that little Ms La Nina has brought us...with today being the very first day of Winter, we've already experienced (in the last month) an ice/snow storm, a wind storm, record rains (which of course equals flooding) and another large wind storm (following the flooding, of course). All of these things have caused us all some amount of grief, mine being the influx of vehicles in our dealership to be fixed from all of the accidents.

First I'll chat about the snow/ice storm which happened just before Thanksgiving. We had something like 8 inches of snow in our area. It stuck around for about a week, melting, and freezing, and sleeting, then snowing, then melting and freezing again creating a giant mess of our roads, and ultimately our cars. The boyfriend and I made it through with no negative issues. It was cold, and icy, but my 2010 VW Jetta made it's way home safely the first day (amazingly avoiding all the huge issues just half an hour behind me!) and the rest of the time I convinced the boyfriend to run me back and forth between the barns, making sure I had enough feed and bedding for both horses, as well as to work and back. We flew out to Vegas for Thanksgiving, and when we came home it was dry and cloudy:) Photos below of my parent's road, and then a pic of a friend's backyard about 5 miles from my house.

Then we had a nice big wind storm. I woke up in the middle of the night to a HUGE gust of wind blowing sheets of rain, and hail into my window. We woke up in the morning to no power. Crazy night with very little sleep. Horses survived, thankfully!:)

A few weeks later we were subjected to Washington's favorite weather condition--rain! We had record amounts of rain (I can't remember how much, but something like 4" in a few hours in spots). It DUMPED. Every river on the West side was swollen and threatening to spill their banks...the Green and White Rivers (the two the we are sandwiched between) stayed within them, but the Stillaguamish and Snoqualmie overflowed. Like a lot. Photos below of the Green River, and then a couple from news channels about the Snoqualmie and Stillaguamish.

And last but not least we had our most fabulous wind storm. There is damage EVERYWHERE, including a beautiful historic barn that collapsed. The news was saying top wind gusts in Enumclaw (the next town over from us) was 74mph. A family friend, who lives just off the main Hwy in Enumclaw, has a home weather station that clocked one gust at 83mph...and she claims she saw it peak at 115mph during one particularly strong gust. Needless to say, I was worried about the horses. Power was out at both barns, but everyone was snug and calm. Gotta love nicely built barns!

Anyhow, thats what I have now. Tango and I went on a nice walk, and he is enjoying his new suite between the two arabians...I think they are exhausting him because he was SUPER good for his walk on Sunday! I'll update again soon!