With the temperature well above freezing it was to MSU (Midwestern State University) I ventured on this second Wednesday of the 2025 version of December.
Only 15 days til Christmas.
As you can see, via the photo documentation, blue is the dominant color in the sky, currently.
This year's installation of MSU's Fantasy of Lights began arriving before Halloween. Each year since I have been here the Fantasy is mostly the same, but always with a few tweaks, here and there.
Last I looked, rain is not in the current forecast, at my location, well into the future.
Let's go check the current forecast. Well, there now is precipitation predicted, in 14 days, on Christmas Eve, in the form of rain, but possibly snow.
Meanwhile up in my old Washington home zone, the Pacific Northwest has been hit with two atmospheric rivers, dropping record breaking amounts of water.
I heard from my little brother Jake this morning, after I texted him, asking him if it's as bad as the news is making it sound. Little brother told me they've been told to be prepared to evacuate on Friday. So, he is packed up and ready to flee to higher ground.
Brother Jake's home is on Beaver Marsh Road, on the Skagit Flats, next door to his youngest son, my Favorite Nephew Joey, father of Hank Frank.
Joey's big brother, Jason, has been escaping the Washington rain by having an extended stay in Hawaii. But, Jason is coming home early, because of the predicted bad flooding.
The Skagit River is the big river flowing through the Skagit Valley. There also is the Samish River. And other creek type water flows, which also flood.
The current flooding is predicted to likely be record breaking.
The last real bad flooding in the Skagit Valley was back in the 1990s. At that point in time, I stayed up well past midnight, joining hundreds filling sandbags building a sandbag wall to protect downtown Mount Vernon.
The crest was predicted to happen around 11 that morning. I joined the throngs downtown watching the river rise. Just as the river was about to go over the sandbag wall, the level suddenly dropped. Everyone was stunned, flabbergasted, did not know what happened.
Within a short time sirens were blaring, helicopters were in the air, and at some point we learned the Fir Island dike had breached, downstream a few miles, near the mouth of the Skagit River, flooding Fir Island, doing a lot of damage, but sparing downtown Mount Vernon from getting flooded for the first time.
And then in this century Mount Vernon rebuilt its waterfront, adding a Dutch designed flood wall which could be erected quickly by just a couple workers.
I think the current flood may be the first time the Mount Vernon Skagit flood wall will hopefully keep downtown Mount Vernon un-flooded.
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