After a splendid, sunny fall day yesterday we were greeting with light drizzle this morning.  It looks like the next 5-6 days will be the same:

We’re in one of those Northwest summer periods of endless beautiful weather.  It’s been clear with daily high temps in the 70’s and 80’s since our last measurable rain on June 25.  It’s lovely but hard on our plants.

This is the time of the year when we realize part of the reason the Pacific Northwest is a wonderful place to live.  We watch the national news and see terrible fires, record heat, flooding, tornadoes, hurricane warnings, etc.  Then I look at the monthly forecast for North Bend and get this:

July Forecast

And the first two weeks of August look the same.  With over fifty golf courses within an hour’s drive there’s no need for trips to Florida or Arizona this time of year.

The weird spring weather continues. Just a week after our last glimpse of snowflakes, the temperature today hit 87 degrees, tying Seattle with Phoenix as the warmest major city in the U.S.  and 24 degrees above the average high for the day. We had to begin watering the gardens, something we usually don’t do until the end of May or early June.

Related articles

• Seattle as hot as Phoenix on Monday (seattletimes.com)

Well, it IS only the middle of spring here so we can’t expect anything better than cool, wet weather.  And that’s what we’re getting.  It’s been raining pretty much non-stop since Friday afternoon and today we had a mix of rain, sleet, hail and thunder after a two-inch downpour overnight.  I was surprised to see a fresh dusting of snow on Mt. Si.

Mt. Si, late afternoon

Yesterday afternoon I decided to celebrate the coming of Spring and played a quick eighteen holes at Mt. Si while Trisha hosted the monthly ladies book club meeting.  It was quite nice although a few little rain showers were visible along the slopes of Rattlesnake Mountain.  A light rain began just as I walked off the last green.  By the time we went to bed there was a light covering of snow and this morning we have this, our first snow since December 19:

However….  less than ten hours later I’m walking off the ninth green at Mt. Si after another 18 holes of golf.  What a great place.

Today was the shortest day of the year; tomorrow we get 4 seconds more of daylight.  By the end of January it will be an hour and twenty-seven minutes more with sunset occurring at 5:10 instead of  4:21.  By the first week of February, I may be able to tee off at my regular 7:30 am time.  Just about 180 days until June 20th’s sixteen hours of daylight.

Sunrise at Bandon Dunes, Oregon