a surreal 2017 continues

It's been an exceptional year in many ways. Not always good, but definitely riding the tails of the distribution curve!

• Winter was amazing for its stretches of cold and snow, topped off by the 13 inches on Superbowl Sunday.
• Spring was absurdly grey and damp - from 1Jul 2016 to 30Jun 2017 we had over 98 inches of rain!
• Summer had its heat spells, no surprise there. What was decidedly uncommon was the amount of smoke west of the Cascades. A month or more ago it was fires from Canada whose smoke came south, then the past week smoke from southern Oregon came north. 
• The past three days have seen the Gorge go up in flames, whipped to a frenzy by powerful east winds from Cascade Locks to Corbett. Portland (and even Longview) received a dusting of ash from the fires to our east. So many good memories of Gorge hikes are still intact, but they definitely won't look the same next time.
• The sun disappeared for about 2 minutes.. but we knew that was coming at least!
• In-laws in law John and Theo were taken from us in a brief heart-beat; their funeral was today as the ash drifted slowly to earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The late afternoon at our home brought the first sign of several hoped-for change in the weather: the west wind arrived and knocked temperatures down 8 degrees in a half-hour, and before sunset temperatures fell into the 60s. Hooray! Next up, a chance of showers - though lightning could accompany them from the remnants of Lidia, which would be very bad. If the wind reverses in the Gorge the fire should fall back to already-charred areas and hopefully become more manageable. As with everything in life: we shall see.