Today it hit 91 degrees on our backyard thermometer. Given that the average May high is just 64 it was a pretty toasty day. And it marked the fifteenth consecutive day without any rainfall–halfway to the record of twenty-nine.

Two weeks ago we thought we had the last snow of the winter. But this morning we were greeted with 3.5 inches of the white stuff. And it’s opening day for the Mariners! It’s supposed to be 50 degrees plus later today but I’m skeptical. Here’s the view from the front porch at 6:00 a.m. this morning. Sigh!

It’s the day after Easter and a small storm just blew through covering the ground and trees with fresh SNOW! I see that the mountain passes are going to get another foot or so of snow and Snoqualmie Pass got a record 141 inches in March.

It’s the last weekend of March so maybe this is the final snowfall of the winter. We are sure tired of shoveling and driving throught this stuff.

The rain finally let up last night and we even got a peek at the sun a few times this morning. Our neighborhood was spared and even downtown North Bend had only nuisance levels of water. But just a few miles north and west of us things were much worse. This is an aerial photo from the Seattle Times of the Snoqualmie River. The Carnation Golf Course is kind of at the middle left of this photo. I see that the official rainfall for Snoqualmie Pass, about 15 miles east of us on I-90 was, over 17 inches. The Seattle Times has some excellent photos of area flooding.

That was the lead on the local news this evening. The snow finally stopped Monday morning and over the next forty-eight hours the temperature has gone from below freezing to the mid 50s along with non-stop torrential rain. One town near the coast has had over 14 inches of rain in the last day and a half. I-5 will soon be closed south of Tacoma. There was even water over the road leading to the Mt. Si bridge we cross to get home: the first time ever.

Here’s a photo of downtown Snoqualmie where some of you who have visited us have attended church or gone to dinner.

OK. It’s bad enough to have to get back into the go to work routine after the Christmas-New Years break. But our relentless winter launched the first work week of ’09 with another 4-5 inches of snow topped in the last hour or so with heavy rain.

Today began much like each of the past eight or so days… clearing areas in the back yard for the birds and ducks to feed. The scenery is indeed lovely but it’s snowing again and there really is sufficient white stuff at this point. More isn’t adding to the beauty. But we’re settled in for the day: reading, listening to new music, cataloging stamps and eventually baking cookies and preparing a traditional Christmas dinner of turkey, yams, and green bean casserole.

Today’s forecast called for another one to three inches of snow. Well, so far we’ve recorded six inches and it still looks like a blizzard outside. We’ve reached that serious winter conundrum we occasionally encountered back in Michigan… there’s nowhere to put the snow any more. And we just had our roads cleared yesterday. The weather guys keep saying this is supposed to turn to rain–not soon enough. We ventured out in the evening for a Christmas Eve dinner at the Salish Lodge with a table overlooking Snoqualmie Falls.