It's only the 9th.  2023 has been exhausting so far.

I just saw a news headline that called our weather a "parade of cyclones".  I guess that sums it up pretty well.

New Year's Eve was the biggest storm we have ever had.  Power went out for 5 hours.  I don't even remember the last time we had a power outage.  A power pole line had blown over in the storm.

Another storm blew through right after that.  Not as bad, but still a lot of wind.  I think everyone was on hyper alert after first storm, but second storm did not amount to much.  Probably still a lot of downed trees and so on (as the ground became very saturated).

Between the two storms, it sounded like most in my office had downed trees and fences.

{We did lose a fence.  It was hanging by a thread, so no biggie and definitely not surprised.  Procrastination for the win.  Beats losing a newer fence.}

We had decided to take MM(19) back to school on Sunday.  I don't have any reason to pay attention to the weather.  I mean, this is extreme weather.  So I would have never looked that closely.  But my boss was paying attention to rainfall amounts re: construction.  He made a comment and we changed our plans.  Ended up dropping off MM(19) on Saturday.  It wouldn't have been my preference to make the drive on a busy Saturday.  But no one was on the road and it didn't rain.  The drive was lovely.  The weather was much nicer down south.  Phew!

Woke up Sunday and looked at my phone.  What the heck happened!?  One of the first things I saw was half of our region was without power and there was a roof in the middle of the road.  Did a tornado blow through?  It was another *crazy* wind storm.  Everyone has told me that it was completely bonkers.

We drove home 5 hours on the freeway Sunday.  It wasn't until we got to our city line that we started to see the excessive wind damage.  A billboard had been blown to shreds.  Several road signs has been knocked over.  When we got to our neighborhood, it was littered with tree branches.

This morning I saw that the pool we used to go to, the 300 pound lifeguard stand flipped over.   That's how windy it was.  

DL(17) was home during the storm.  Power was out again for 7 hours. 

Another storm blew through last night.  Now it's crazy rain.  The crazy rain we changed our travel plans for.  Like last time, I think the weather forecasters were over compensating and preparing for the worst (second storm in a row).  After seeing how localized that wind damage was (to the extreme) I felt more confident that maybe it wouldn't be so bad last night. (What are the odds that the worst of a storm hits the same place twice?)  It ended up being "nothing".  Slept through it.  No crazy wind or rain. 

We are supposed to get substantial rainfall over the next couple of days.  That is concerning, with all the water ways being so full from the first two storms.  

Today I woke up to news of all the flooding in MM(19)'s college town.   Ugh.   They are supposed to get many inches of rain with this next storm.  Classes ended up being entirely canceled, mid morning.  I am sure this was after MM(19) went to his first class.  I think they were trying to move things online, but clearly that wasn't helpful for those stranded, dealing with flood waters and power outages.  Eventually just gave up and canceled classes.  It sounds unlikely that tomorrow will be any better.  

There is nothing but rain in our forecast.   What a mess.

We are moving onto big storm #5.  I don't know if this is the last crazy storm or if there is more to come.  Or if it matters, as there is nowhere for all this rain to go.  (Doesn't have to be crazy/stormy to be too much rain, at this point.)

We were going to a film festival in Oregon this weekend.  I expect that we will cancel this trip.  We never even bothered booking the hotel, because of the weather. 

I personally wanted to cancel our beach hotel this past weekend.  Wanted to just send MM(19) back to school on the train.  But both MH and MM seemed pretty set on making the drive.  This is why we ended up just moving up our plans by one day.  I am glad we made it work, as I think to all the hotels and plans we have had to cancel already this past year.  I appreciate that we got a bit of a reprieve during all this craziness.  

Edited to add:  Flooding is getting very serious around the college.  😞  MM is fine.  It just has gotten so much more serious since I first posted this.  

Update:  MM's college got 8 inches of rain in 48 hours.  (Most of that was Monday morning).  More storms and rain to come.  I think the flash flood warning was reduced to a flood warning.