Side note:  This is what X-E’s Blog page looks like today. The Pilver’s August Party may be done soon!

Moving from Minnesota to Washington held the promise of hot, dry, and hopefully boring summers in regards to weather.  Typically, here in eastern Washington, the rainfall is light to non-existent in the summer months.  I can dig that.  It’s not muggy, no tornado sirens, and few heavy thunderstorms sound like a good time to me.

That trend ended last week.  Currently we have had several days of heavy rains and thunderstorms.  Rain is great, I have to move the sprinkler less because of it.  But cloud bursts bringing a huge amount of rain in a short period creates landslides which close down roads and make for a snowed in effect, only with mud.  They even remove the mud with snow plows, which I found out when trying to get home the other night during a landslide which was not as severe as the one shown here.

It’s a bit difficult to tell what you are looking at.  But, this is a landslide not far from my home.  It is blocking the road to the nearest ‘city’.  There’s two other much longer routes to get to that city; one is open and adds 45 minutes to the commute and the other is covered with more mud than the one in this picture.  Needless to say, I am not going there today.

So, that’ll get cleaned up in the next day or so, and life will go on.  But there’s another natural danger, fires.  From living here in the past, I remembered wild fires, but I never remembered them as bad as the ones we are having this year.  Just yesterday a fire blazed up right over there (imagine me pointing out the window.)  It’s still burning, but we’re told it is under control and not critical at this point.  However, if it did become OUT of control, some residents on this road would have a landslide on one end of the route to evacuate and a fire on the other.

Yesterday I noticed a fire helicopter hauling water and dumping it on my fields of dry, dead weeds.  Scary.  This continued for a couple hours so I drove up the road to see what was going on.  A large field, just like mine and only a mile away had burned completely and the fire was moving up the mountain burning trees and shrubs along the way.  All the neighbors were out in their yards and fields mowing like crazy the weeds surrounding their houses in efforts to keep the flames (if they spread) from engulfing their homes.

So, thank you to the man or woman who flies this thing.  Also, thank you to the men and women who hiked up the steep mountain and fought (and are still fighting) the fire.  Last night we had a huge lighting storm and there are little poofs of smoke scattered here and there on the mountains, hopefully at the end of their burns.

Supposedly the XE party begins tomorrow, I cannot take any credit for Matt’s decision to emerge from hibernation, but I am going to anyway.  When it begins, my party is over.  Doesn’t mean I won’t write more this month, just means I can stop thinking of names for my scab internet party.