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| January 25, 2007 Shelton Mason County Journal |  |
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Reporl:s of rain make
(Continued from page 2.)
predictions of up to a year to its
Climate Prediction Center and di-
rects questions about global warm-
ing to that office.
The NOAA forecast is for above-
average temperatures in the 40s
for this part of the state in Feb-
ruary, March and April of 2008.
This follows the agency's report
on 2006 which fi)und last year to
be "the warmest on record," a cir-
cumstance attributed to a "gener-
al warming trend" and El Nifm, a
weather system which goes by the
Spanish tbr "The Boy."
As it happens the nifms and ni-
fias of NOAA have also published
"A Paleo Perspective on Global
Warming," paleo being another
way of saying "ancient" or "very
old." This paleo publication of
NOAA detines global warming as
the observation that the surface of
the Earth is warming and states:
"This warming is one of many
kinds of climate change that the
Earth has gone through in the past
and will continue to go through in
the future." They point out that
the Greenhouse Effect is a natural
process that may cause the surface
of the Earth to "become increasing-
ly warm" but allow that many sci-
entists "have now concluded that
global warming can be explained
by human-caused enhancement of
the Greenhouse Effect."
This contbrms in a general way
with a survey of opinion from some
of the 19 people who watch the
weather in Mason County and re-
sponded positively to an invitation
to share what they have learned
with the readers of this newspa-
per.
DENNIS MYERS recorded
89.5 inches of rain at the corner of
Hill Street and Dickinson Avenue
in Shelton, this as compared to 65
inches in 2005. He detected no rain
at all in August but 28.25 inches
in November and 25.25 inches in
January of' last year.
Myers uses a five-gallon buck-
et to collect the rain and keeps
track of his measures on the door
of his garage on Hillcrest. He's
been keeping track of the rain for
the last five years and has count-
ed 351.25 inches all told, which
makes for a five-year average of
70.25 inches.
Those five years are but five
drops in tile bucket of geological
time and that is the time by which
he measures reports that Earth is
heating up.
"What it is: about every 10,000
or 100,000 years there's an ice age
and then there's a recession of
ice," he said. "I think we're in the
recession part. The other thing too
is I'll be dead by that time. I just
think it's just the natural cycle of
the Earth."
TOM SCHREIBER recorded
138.26 inches of rain, which is
well short of the 159.95 inches
he record in 1999 at his home on
Bambi Farms Road in the upper
Skokomish Valley. He's been gath-
ering information about the rain
for the past 18 years. "I can't help
but wonder if we are coming into a
wetter period," he writes.
Schreiber says the 39.3 inches
of rain he recorded in January of
last year was the first time in more
than six years that a month's rain
topped the 30-inch mark. Given
that he also recorded 43.4 incaes
of rain in November and 9.01 inch-
es on November 6 alone, his wet-
weather wardrobe might need a
little beefing up.
"I think it may be time to go out
and get a new pair of hip waders,"
he said.
(That 9.01 inches on November
6, by the way, is second to the 9.35
inches that fell on November 20,
2003, the day a Journal photog-
FULL SERVICE
AUTO REPAIR
Specializing in
brakes, exhaust
and custom work
FREE ESTIMATES
& FLUID CHECKS
rapher took pictures of kids swim-
ming in Kneeland Park.)
His 18-year high for a month's
worth of rain is the 45 inches he
counted in November of 1998,
and the 40.1 inches he counted in
November of 1990 represents the
only other time the wet stuff has
topped the 40-inch mark. Over the
course of these 18 years Novem-
ber has been the wettest month
of all, with 390.2 inches all told as
compared to the 355 inches which
have fallen in the January of the
years between 1989 and 2006.
HIS DRIEST month has been
August with 22.92 inches all told
and his driest year was the first
year he kept track of the rain,
with the 72.2 inches recorded in
1989 including five months when
he detected no precipitation at all:
February, June, July, August and
September. He said the first three
days of 2007 produced 4.5 inches
of rain.
David Haugen found 2007 to
be the third wettest year in the
20 years he has been measuring
the rainfall on Dewatto Road. He
counted 107.2 inches of rainfall
last year, including 30 inches in
January and 32 in what he calls
"the wettest November ever."
Haugen also measured 14
inches of snow, including seven
inches in November and four in
December. "We get our heavy wet
snows and then you get your drier
snows," Haugen said. "I think a
heavy wet snow has a lot more wa-
ter to it. When I just measure the
snow I stick a ruler in it."
His rain total does not include
melted snow, though he does not
try to split the difference when
rain is mixed with snow. "It's kind
of tough to interface between the
snow and the rain. What I try to
do is keep it separate," he said.
THIS IS NOT to say he is loath
to address the question of the hour:
Is global warming a big snow job?
"My numbers and even my exis-
tence haven't been around long
enough to even tell anything as far
as a trend," he said. "I think the
climate's changing. The climate's
always changing."
He prefers to stick with what he
knows for sure and after 20 years
he knows for sure that Dewatto
Road gets very wet in January,
very dry in the summer and very
wet again towards the end of every
year. The average annual rainfall
is about 80 inches in his neck of
the woods.
"If change is happening it's hap-
pening on a glacial scale, and for
the human observer it's hard to
come to conclusions," Haugen said.
"All I can do is measure and not a
lot more, but I can't predict."
Larry Antush of Timberlakes
took a different approach to the
matter of what we can know from
the snow. He recorded six inches
of snow last year and determined
that it translated into 1.69 inches
of"snowmelt water content."
HIS ANALYSIS of the fluffy
confirmed the surmise of Haugen.
One inch that fell in March made
for .33 of an inch of melt and the
one that fell in December made
for .48, or an average of .405 of
an inch of water for each inch of
snow. This was a wet and heavy
kind of snow compared to the dry
and fluffy snow that fell in Novem-
ber of last year. Four inches fall-
ing during the llth month made
i
DOG
L
=/$)--
CASINO
for .88 inches of melt, or .22 inches
of water for every inch of snow.
As for the water that made it to
Earth in liquid form, this amount-
ed to 66.2 inches in 2006, an
amount that is 6.04 inches more
than Antush's definition of nor-
mal. The 23.46 inches he recorded
in January is 12.99 above his norm
while the 4.11 in February was 4.3
below his norm.
Doyle Wilcox of East Saint An-
drews Drive North, Lake Limer-
ick, posts weather conditions "live"
on the Internet every two seconds
by way of Weather Underground,
a Web site at www.wunder-
ground.com.
He recorded 78.7 inches of
rainfall in 2006, with 23 inches
in January and 24.25 in Novem-
ber. At the same time he recorded
the highest wind of the year at 57
miles per hour on December 15.
The high temp for the year was
104 degrees on July 22 (the day it
was 100 at the airport in Shelton
and the day after it was 102 at the
airport) and the low was 14 on No-
vember 29 (17 at the airport).
WILCOX, AGE 68, has been
watching the weather for about 10
years as a spotter for NOAA, the
National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration of the U.S. govern-
ment. He grew up in Washington
and says things were hotter in the
Forties and might be getting cold-
er soon. "My opinion of this thing
is it's the evolutionary mini ice
age coming on again," he said. Of
course, the concept of "soon" as ap-
plied to the ice ages can mean hun-
dreds if not thousands of years. "I
think we're in a 10,000-year cycle
and coming into that with the vol-
canoes," he said.
Volcanoes carl have a chilling
effect on the environment as they
spew forth enough ash and soot to
prevent the warming rays of the
sun from reaching sea and soil.
Wilcox is of the opinion that the
burning by humans of fossil fuel is
contributing "a little bit" to climate
change but that doesn't mean we
can prevent natural forces from
warming or cooling our planet as
they see fit.
"There's no way we're going to
stop it because it's a phenomenon
that's going on," he said. "The core
of the Earth is shifting. The liquid
core is moving in the center of the
Earth, and that's what's going on.
I know that fossil fuel's no good,
but there's no way we can stop it.
I know people don't like to hear
that."
BILL VIGER, age 86, had his
wettest weather yet in 22 years of
taking the pulse of precipitation
midway between Union proper
and the Alderbrook Resort & Spa.
He lived in Union in the Forties
and then moved back there after
he retired.
"I will say I've lived out on
Hood Canal for a long time and
the weather is just getting milder
and milder, except for this one, of
course," he said.
He recalls a photograph of
Fritz Dalby and his dog ice fish-
ing on the canal back in 1951 and
a year after that when the canal
froze between the Union and Ta-
huya rivers. "We had lots of two-
foot snows," he said. "We did a lot
of things in the wintertime here:
sliding here and there."
Viger counted 110.56 inches of
rain last year, with 34.16 in Janu-
Big Screen 11/Giveaway
Feb, 1st
Stop by Casino for details
Sweetheart
"Quality and Trust --
That's Hometowne
Service"
ii i i
Page 8 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, January 25, 2007
Just
Su
Party Feb. 4th
Sun-Wed
10 am - 12 am
Thurs-Sat
10 am - 2 am
North of
(360) 877-5656 Shelton at
..... 19330 N Hwy 101
a "big splash:
ary and 33.92 in November. His
previous high-water mark was the
106.42 inches he recorded in 1997
and his driest year was his first
year of keeping track: 42.08 inches
in 1985. He detected just a smid-
gen of water in Augmst of last year
with .02 of an inch and July was
nearly as dry with .25.
HE BELIEVES in global warm-
ing but is careful when it comes to
the reasons why and likens it to
the oxygen problems of Hood Ca-
nal. It seems clear that the waters
are oxygen-deprived from time to
time, but the causes may be many
and it's hard to single one out. "I
think we're heating up somewhat,"
Viger said. "I can see that there's
a lot of factors entering into it.
There's not just any one thing."
Myron Skubinna of Union re-
corded 95 inches of rain. This com-
pares to the 67.8 inches he record-
ed there in 2005.
"The above figures are the result
of resolving measurements from
two separate gauges, fairly widely
separated to account tbr anomalies
due to wind and surrounding trees
and structures," he writes.
An anomaly is defined as some-
thing unusual, irregular or abnor-
mal, a concept that comes to us
from anomalos, the old Greek word
for "uneven." An uneven distribu-
tion of rain is not really anomalous
in this part of the world and Sku-
binna's rain report bears this out.
He measured 3.3 inches of rain in
June through September of 2005
and 2.7 inches through the same
four months of last year, this as
compared to 35.6 inches in Janu-
ary, November and December of
2005 and 75.5 in the same three
months of last year.
THAT'S THE REPORT from
40 East Hawks Prairie View Place,
of which he writes: "This location
is 500 feet above sea level, hence
more moisture falls than at Hood
Canal level." His low-water mark
of 2006 was August when there
was no measurable precipitation
and his high-water mark was No-
vember with 31.1 inches of rain.
Other weather watchers
vided us with other records
rain:
• C.J. Chambers has
keeping a record of the rain
1974 at the intersection of
dia Road and Binns Swiger
Road. By his reckoning last
ranked third on his spread
and November of last year
rainiest month of the 384
he has tracked over the last
years with 26.2 inches.
• Donald Payne
measured 66.16 inches of
For the months of June, July
(Please turn to page 9.)
RESOLUTION: SHOP
FOR YOUR HEART!
Most doctors conclude that
30 minutes of walking will
benefit your health and extend
your life.
Since you need somewhere
to walk to, make Old Town
Hobby your destination. Your
heart will thank you!
Don't be left in the cold!
Come home to the
warmth of an Avalon
wood or gas stove.
You need heat you can depend on -- es
if the power goes out. An Avalon wood or gas"
burning stove will heat your home effi
and reliably - without electricity. They use bottl
radiant and natural convection heat and can be
installed in just one day. You can even cook food
on the surface! Save money on heating costs
heat your home even during the worst
storms.
Avalon. Firestyles for Life.
Firestyles for Life
• APPLIANCES * SPAS & SUPPLIES• FIREPLACES •
2505 Olympic Hwy. N., Suite 220 Next to Les Schwab
18 years of Quality reputation and service, Our caring, Quality
L
Reporl:s of rain make
(Continued from page 2.)
predictions of up to a year to its
Climate Prediction Center and di-
rects questions about global warm-
ing to that office.
The NOAA forecast is for above-
average temperatures in the 40s
for this part of the state in Feb-
ruary, March and April of 2008.
This follows the agency's report
on 2006 which fi)und last year to
be "the warmest on record," a cir-
cumstance attributed to a "gener-
al warming trend" and El Nifm, a
weather system which goes by the
Spanish tbr "The Boy."
As it happens the nifms and ni-
fias of NOAA have also published
"A Paleo Perspective on Global
Warming," paleo being another
way of saying "ancient" or "very
old." This paleo publication of
NOAA detines global warming as
the observation that the surface of
the Earth is warming and states:
"This warming is one of many
kinds of climate change that the
Earth has gone through in the past
and will continue to go through in
the future." They point out that
the Greenhouse Effect is a natural
process that may cause the surface
of the Earth to "become increasing-
ly warm" but allow that many sci-
entists "have now concluded that
global warming can be explained
by human-caused enhancement of
the Greenhouse Effect."
This contbrms in a general way
with a survey of opinion from some
of the 19 people who watch the
weather in Mason County and re-
sponded positively to an invitation
to share what they have learned
with the readers of this newspa-
per.
DENNIS MYERS recorded
89.5 inches of rain at the corner of
Hill Street and Dickinson Avenue
in Shelton, this as compared to 65
inches in 2005. He detected no rain
at all in August but 28.25 inches
in November and 25.25 inches in
January of' last year.
Myers uses a five-gallon buck-
et to collect the rain and keeps
track of his measures on the door
of his garage on Hillcrest. He's
been keeping track of the rain for
the last five years and has count-
ed 351.25 inches all told, which
makes for a five-year average of
70.25 inches.
Those five years are but five
drops in tile bucket of geological
time and that is the time by which
he measures reports that Earth is
heating up.
"What it is: about every 10,000
or 100,000 years there's an ice age
and then there's a recession of
ice," he said. "I think we're in the
recession part. The other thing too
is I'll be dead by that time. I just
think it's just the natural cycle of
the Earth."
TOM SCHREIBER recorded
138.26 inches of rain, which is
well short of the 159.95 inches
he record in 1999 at his home on
Bambi Farms Road in the upper
Skokomish Valley. He's been gath-
ering information about the rain
for the past 18 years. "I can't help
but wonder if we are coming into a
wetter period," he writes.
Schreiber says the 39.3 inches
of rain he recorded in January of
last year was the first time in more
than six years that a month's rain
topped the 30-inch mark. Given
that he also recorded 43.4 incaes
of rain in November and 9.01 inch-
es on November 6 alone, his wet-
weather wardrobe might need a
little beefing up.
"I think it may be time to go out
and get a new pair of hip waders,"
he said.
(That 9.01 inches on November
6, by the way, is second to the 9.35
inches that fell on November 20,
2003, the day a Journal photog-
FULL SERVICE
AUTO REPAIR
Specializing in
brakes, exhaust
and custom work
FREE ESTIMATES
& FLUID CHECKS
rapher took pictures of kids swim-
ming in Kneeland Park.)
His 18-year high for a month's
worth of rain is the 45 inches he
counted in November of 1998,
and the 40.1 inches he counted in
November of 1990 represents the
only other time the wet stuff has
topped the 40-inch mark. Over the
course of these 18 years Novem-
ber has been the wettest month
of all, with 390.2 inches all told as
compared to the 355 inches which
have fallen in the January of the
years between 1989 and 2006.
HIS DRIEST month has been
August with 22.92 inches all told
and his driest year was the first
year he kept track of the rain,
with the 72.2 inches recorded in
1989 including five months when
he detected no precipitation at all:
February, June, July, August and
September. He said the first three
days of 2007 produced 4.5 inches
of rain.
David Haugen found 2007 to
be the third wettest year in the
20 years he has been measuring
the rainfall on Dewatto Road. He
counted 107.2 inches of rainfall
last year, including 30 inches in
January and 32 in what he calls
"the wettest November ever."
Haugen also measured 14
inches of snow, including seven
inches in November and four in
December. "We get our heavy wet
snows and then you get your drier
snows," Haugen said. "I think a
heavy wet snow has a lot more wa-
ter to it. When I just measure the
snow I stick a ruler in it."
His rain total does not include
melted snow, though he does not
try to split the difference when
rain is mixed with snow. "It's kind
of tough to interface between the
snow and the rain. What I try to
do is keep it separate," he said.
THIS IS NOT to say he is loath
to address the question of the hour:
Is global warming a big snow job?
"My numbers and even my exis-
tence haven't been around long
enough to even tell anything as far
as a trend," he said. "I think the
climate's changing. The climate's
always changing."
He prefers to stick with what he
knows for sure and after 20 years
he knows for sure that Dewatto
Road gets very wet in January,
very dry in the summer and very
wet again towards the end of every
year. The average annual rainfall
is about 80 inches in his neck of
the woods.
"If change is happening it's hap-
pening on a glacial scale, and for
the human observer it's hard to
come to conclusions," Haugen said.
"All I can do is measure and not a
lot more, but I can't predict."
Larry Antush of Timberlakes
took a different approach to the
matter of what we can know from
the snow. He recorded six inches
of snow last year and determined
that it translated into 1.69 inches
of"snowmelt water content."
HIS ANALYSIS of the fluffy
confirmed the surmise of Haugen.
One inch that fell in March made
for .33 of an inch of melt and the
one that fell in December made
for .48, or an average of .405 of
an inch of water for each inch of
snow. This was a wet and heavy
kind of snow compared to the dry
and fluffy snow that fell in Novem-
ber of last year. Four inches fall-
ing during the llth month made
i
DOG
L
=/$)--
CASINO
for .88 inches of melt, or .22 inches
of water for every inch of snow.
As for the water that made it to
Earth in liquid form, this amount-
ed to 66.2 inches in 2006, an
amount that is 6.04 inches more
than Antush's definition of nor-
mal. The 23.46 inches he recorded
in January is 12.99 above his norm
while the 4.11 in February was 4.3
below his norm.
Doyle Wilcox of East Saint An-
drews Drive North, Lake Limer-
ick, posts weather conditions "live"
on the Internet every two seconds
by way of Weather Underground,
a Web site at www.wunder-
ground.com.
He recorded 78.7 inches of
rainfall in 2006, with 23 inches
in January and 24.25 in Novem-
ber. At the same time he recorded
the highest wind of the year at 57
miles per hour on December 15.
The high temp for the year was
104 degrees on July 22 (the day it
was 100 at the airport in Shelton
and the day after it was 102 at the
airport) and the low was 14 on No-
vember 29 (17 at the airport).
WILCOX, AGE 68, has been
watching the weather for about 10
years as a spotter for NOAA, the
National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration of the U.S. govern-
ment. He grew up in Washington
and says things were hotter in the
Forties and might be getting cold-
er soon. "My opinion of this thing
is it's the evolutionary mini ice
age coming on again," he said. Of
course, the concept of "soon" as ap-
plied to the ice ages can mean hun-
dreds if not thousands of years. "I
think we're in a 10,000-year cycle
and coming into that with the vol-
canoes," he said.
Volcanoes carl have a chilling
effect on the environment as they
spew forth enough ash and soot to
prevent the warming rays of the
sun from reaching sea and soil.
Wilcox is of the opinion that the
burning by humans of fossil fuel is
contributing "a little bit" to climate
change but that doesn't mean we
can prevent natural forces from
warming or cooling our planet as
they see fit.
"There's no way we're going to
stop it because it's a phenomenon
that's going on," he said. "The core
of the Earth is shifting. The liquid
core is moving in the center of the
Earth, and that's what's going on.
I know that fossil fuel's no good,
but there's no way we can stop it.
I know people don't like to hear
that."
BILL VIGER, age 86, had his
wettest weather yet in 22 years of
taking the pulse of precipitation
midway between Union proper
and the Alderbrook Resort & Spa.
He lived in Union in the Forties
and then moved back there after
he retired.
"I will say I've lived out on
Hood Canal for a long time and
the weather is just getting milder
and milder, except for this one, of
course," he said.
He recalls a photograph of
Fritz Dalby and his dog ice fish-
ing on the canal back in 1951 and
a year after that when the canal
froze between the Union and Ta-
huya rivers. "We had lots of two-
foot snows," he said. "We did a lot
of things in the wintertime here:
sliding here and there."
Viger counted 110.56 inches of
rain last year, with 34.16 in Janu-
Big Screen 11/Giveaway
Feb, 1st
Stop by Casino for details
Sweetheart
"Quality and Trust --
That's Hometowne
Service"
ii i i
Page 8 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, January 25, 2007
Just
Su
Party Feb. 4th
Sun-Wed
10 am - 12 am
Thurs-Sat
10 am - 2 am
North of
(360) 877-5656 Shelton at
..... 19330 N Hwy 101
a "big splash:
ary and 33.92 in November. His
previous high-water mark was the
106.42 inches he recorded in 1997
and his driest year was his first
year of keeping track: 42.08 inches
in 1985. He detected just a smid-
gen of water in Augmst of last year
with .02 of an inch and July was
nearly as dry with .25.
HE BELIEVES in global warm-
ing but is careful when it comes to
the reasons why and likens it to
the oxygen problems of Hood Ca-
nal. It seems clear that the waters
are oxygen-deprived from time to
time, but the causes may be many
and it's hard to single one out. "I
think we're heating up somewhat,"
Viger said. "I can see that there's
a lot of factors entering into it.
There's not just any one thing."
Myron Skubinna of Union re-
corded 95 inches of rain. This com-
pares to the 67.8 inches he record-
ed there in 2005.
"The above figures are the result
of resolving measurements from
two separate gauges, fairly widely
separated to account tbr anomalies
due to wind and surrounding trees
and structures," he writes.
An anomaly is defined as some-
thing unusual, irregular or abnor-
mal, a concept that comes to us
from anomalos, the old Greek word
for "uneven." An uneven distribu-
tion of rain is not really anomalous
in this part of the world and Sku-
binna's rain report bears this out.
He measured 3.3 inches of rain in
June through September of 2005
and 2.7 inches through the same
four months of last year, this as
compared to 35.6 inches in Janu-
ary, November and December of
2005 and 75.5 in the same three
months of last year.
THAT'S THE REPORT from
40 East Hawks Prairie View Place,
of which he writes: "This location
is 500 feet above sea level, hence
more moisture falls than at Hood
Canal level." His low-water mark
of 2006 was August when there
was no measurable precipitation
and his high-water mark was No-
vember with 31.1 inches of rain.
Other weather watchers
vided us with other records
rain:
• C.J. Chambers has
keeping a record of the rain
1974 at the intersection of
dia Road and Binns Swiger
Road. By his reckoning last
ranked third on his spread
and November of last year
rainiest month of the 384
he has tracked over the last
years with 26.2 inches.
• Donald Payne
measured 66.16 inches of
For the months of June, July
(Please turn to page 9.)
RESOLUTION: SHOP
FOR YOUR HEART!
Most doctors conclude that
30 minutes of walking will
benefit your health and extend
your life.
Since you need somewhere
to walk to, make Old Town
Hobby your destination. Your
heart will thank you!
Don't be left in the cold!
Come home to the
warmth of an Avalon
wood or gas stove.
You need heat you can depend on -- es
if the power goes out. An Avalon wood or gas"
burning stove will heat your home effi
and reliably - without electricity. They use bottl
radiant and natural convection heat and can be
installed in just one day. You can even cook food
on the surface! Save money on heating costs
heat your home even during the worst
storms.
Avalon. Firestyles for Life.
Firestyles for Life
• APPLIANCES * SPAS & SUPPLIES• FIREPLACES •
2505 Olympic Hwy. N., Suite 220 Next to Les Schwab
18 years of Quality reputation and service, Our caring, Quality
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