High water

Well, Benedict is much bigger now than when I first posted pictures of him. Here he is about a month ago:

And here is little Miss Beatrice:

They spend a lot of time play-fighting. At least, I assume it's play and not real fighting. They tire each other out and fall asleep for a while, then wake up to renew the battle. Beatrice has outgrown the stage of chewing everything all the time (she now just chews some things some of the time), but Benedict is still in full chomping and chewing mode. 

I have been to California and back since my last post. I visited my sister for a few days and got to see her family.

We've been having excessive rain the past couple weeks. When someone from western Washington says it's a lot of rain, it's a lot of rain. We're on our third "atmospheric river" in as many weeks. The nearby Nooksack River flooded several towns in my county: Sumas, Everson, and Ferndale. It flooded them twice and my do so a third time. 

I was confident my creek would not flood because it has different sources than the Nooksack. The Nooksack is fed by mountain streams and snow melt, which my creek just wanders over from Canada at a lower elevation. Generally, as my dad told me, it only floods if we first get a lot of snow, then a thaw with rain, to put a lot of melted snow plus rain into the creek all at once. We weren't getting any snow, so I figured the creek wouldn't flood. It didn't flood the first time that the Nooksack did, but this past weekend, during the second atmospheric river (meaning a lot of rain coming in from the Pacific Ocean), it did overflow. Color me surprised. And, as it continued to rise, a little nervous. I always say, and it's true, that the water has never come up to the house, but a silent voice always adds "yet."

Still not yet, though. My back yard is a flood plain. The creek flows over it about once every three years or so. This on Sunday was the highest I've ever seen it. 

There was still a foot or so before it would reach the retaining wall, and then there was the wall. But I kept picturing water seeping in under my door. Sunday night I kept going out and using the flashlight function of my phone to look at the water. I was freaking out a little bit. But finally I said to myself, "It's either going to happen or not, and probably not. You can't do anything either way, so go to sleep." And so to bed. In the morning, it had receded quite a bit, although still quite swampy, but it was good to see the grass again.

Now we'll see what happens overnight tonight, as it's raining again. This rainfall is not predicted to be as much as the last two, but the ground is saturated and the waterways are full. It's dark now, but I will not go outside and look. I'll wait until tomorrow morning and see what it's like out there.