The Curse of October

Back in March, I wrote about the Late Winter Doldrums, when all of the water was locked up in snow and ice and there wasn't enough rain to make things better. October has the opposite problem. The water is long gone, the dam releases are pretty much done, and we have to wait for the rains to come.

Unlike a lot of areas in the US, the Pacific Northwest has an actual "rainy season". Granted, this rainy season is 8-9 months of the year, but it's still technically a season. In a typical year, the rains subside in late June and by mid-July rain is pretty rare. We get a few storms in July, August, and September, but they tend to be short events surrounded by hot, sunny weather. Where I grew up in North Carolina, it can rain any time of year.

This year, the October storms are late in coming. The current 10-day forecast has some rain coming in a week, but it doesn't look like it will be enough to boat locally. Oregon is looking closer every day...