Winter Floods

While we haven't received the snow I'm still hoping for, the Elwha has definitely been busy, as it has had the highest flow over the past two weeks since ~1949ish, and it was an impressive show. A few visiting friends and I trekked through parts of the Whiskey Bend trail yesterday and saw this giant tree with a gnarly rootwad hinged on Goblin's Gate atleast 15 feet in the air (lower picture). A little further upriver, the trial was completely gone, atleast 10 feet of bank had been eaten up during the storm - which meant we had a little off-trail adventure up to the historical "Michael's Cabin" site. Needless to say, the storms were hugely influential as the Elwha illustrates and the whole scene is very humbling to observe, powerful dynamics at work...next time I hope to have a front row seat!

Rain, Snow and Sunshine

In true winter fashion, we here in PA received our first snow on December 1st and I loved it! Unfortunately, it didn't last too long as now we're snowless but the downpour of rain is going strong... I'm excited to see what kind of truly "winter weather" we will get here, let the snow fall down!

Currently, my actual research involvement is very slim; the hydrology project is beginning but my farm work schedule has conflicted with the outings, so I haven't done any actual research-related work in quite a while, but next week we're doing an NRCS snowpack data training which will clue me back into the project. Meanwhile, the mysterious wildlife group has yet to materialize - I'm not quite sure what to expect in that realm, but I'm guessing it has do with working in the appropriate season for data collection (and apparently it's not the Fall!).

So, as for now, I'm really enjoying my work at the farm and look forward to all of the snowy adventures (hopefully) that come our way here on the Peninsula.