January 10, 2008
Some of you have asked about our rain over the past few days. This "Pineapple Express" came in on Sunday January 4th and hung around for four days, dumping up to 11 inches of rain in the local mountains. This all fell on top of the unsually large snow pack that we'd had in December, creating massive floods. Many new flood levels were set.
This is a great representation of the amount of rain:
The worst of the flooding was in the Snoqualmie Valley. In this area, four major rivers converge and it's quite prone to flooding. Here is a map showing the rivers and how they meet in the valley. 
The bridge visible in the bottom of the photo is the 124th St. bridge. 
Not too far from here is the place that we've taken Keegan and Jake to go herding. This is the second time in 2 years that Diane's property has flooded. Her Border Collie Tess has been known to swim out to gather sheep and drive them to higher ground. Diane's Blog with photos of the flooding is here.
Snoqualmie is also famous for it's Falls. The Snoqualmie Falls park is an impressive place to visit on a regular day, but the recent view was astounding (and very wet):
The Falls are about 12 miles away from us. Thankfully, we are on higher ground and only had to deal with the flooding in our little town of Issaquah. No small amount though- Issaquah Creek rose to more than 10 feet and on a couple of mornings I drove through deep standing water.
To show a little example of how many roads were affected, here is a blurry map posted by the WA state DOT about 24 hours after the storm started. The road closures shown here were done BEFORE the rivers crested.
In our backyard (literally), the creek went from a trickle to about 8-10 feet wide and washed onto the lawn. The video was taken AFTER it started to receed.
Some of you have asked about our rain over the past few days. This "Pineapple Express" came in on Sunday January 4th and hung around for four days, dumping up to 11 inches of rain in the local mountains. This all fell on top of the unsually large snow pack that we'd had in December, creating massive floods. Many new flood levels were set.
This is a great representation of the amount of rain:
The Falls are about 12 miles away from us. Thankfully, we are on higher ground and only had to deal with the flooding in our little town of Issaquah. No small amount though- Issaquah Creek rose to more than 10 feet and on a couple of mornings I drove through deep standing water.
