[Jeff Higgins]

It has been about the worst flooding that I can remember, and I have lived in and around the Seattle are for my entire 65 years.

We have a rather unique geography/weather combination that contributes to this during the Fall and Spring. We have two large mountain ranges, the Olympics to the west of the Puget Sound area, and the Cascades to the east, which divide Western Washington from Eastern Washington. Our weather comes over the Olympics and stalls up against the Cascades, which impede its eastern progress. As a result, there are two distinctly different "Washingtons" - Western Washington and Eastern Washington. The west side gets all of the rain, the east side is essentially high desert.

It never gets all that cold here, our weather tempered by the Pacific Ocean. As a result, the snow levels in our two mountain ranges fluctuates dramatically, especially during Fall and Spring. The snow level can drop to sea level and be right back up to 10,000 feet in a week at this time of the year. The rain, or if cold enough, the snow essentially does not stop in the Fall and Spring. So we get huge snow packs that melt rather suddenly, accompanied by that steady rain. Talk about a recipe for disaster, with water levels in our river valleys rising at alarming rates when we hit this combination. We have one really big river system, the Columbia and Snake, that drain Eastern Washington (and B.C., and Idaho), but a myriad of smaller systems on the west side of the Cascades that all drain right through the east side of the Puget Sound area, including Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, and many other smaller cities. And, well, they soon get overwhelmed by melting snow and continued rain.

Once "winter" really sets in and snow levels in the Cascades stabilize, this all stops. Only to start again during the spring melt and continuing rain. None of this would be all that much of a problem, of course, if only common sense were applied with regards to development. It doesn't. So we see massive development in our flood plains. That development has now transformed "100 year" flood plains into five to ten year flood plains, with all of the pavement limiting drainage.

It's a real mess, with no real solution. Mother Nature always wins...