Barb and I saw some of the terrifying videos of the destruction caused by hurricane Helene:
We are so pleased we don’t live in a hurricane zone.
Instead, we live in a place with earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.
The View From North Central Idaho
Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.
Every location has it’s trade-offs. If no flooding, it might be a desert, or too steep to build on. If no earthquakes, then you get tornados. If no mosquitos then drought is common. etc.
One of my (relevant to this topic) aims with I bought the current house was: “enough slope and altitude that flooding wasn’t ever going to happen, but in a major earthquake (the the PNW is prone to) changing address as we slide downhill wasn’t likely.” So far, so good.
But not everyone has that option, either because local topography doesn’t have anything that fits that, or they can’t afford it.
Flash floods in the desert are pretty lethal and do a lot of property damage. As an example of the latter, Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley has been closed since 2015 due to flood damage (there was a fire also). And you don’t get a more extreme desert than Death Valley.
Here in TinyTown™ of NW Wyoming we’re in a desert basin, but with enough rivers and dams to keep us supplied with water. We routinely experience what are called “hurricane force” winds of 60 MPH with gusts to 100 MPH, and from my back deck I once watched a neighbor’s unsecured patio umbrella go sailing past a couple of hundred feet up, accelerating and gaining altitude as it went. No idea where it came down, maybe South Dakota (not really, more likely the gully or basin to our east). Winters are mild compared to the Soviet Socialist State of Minnesota, and while summers can get hot here in the desert it almost always cools off comfortably at night.
On t’other hand, if the Yellowstone Caldera decides to blow its top again, we’ll have a couple of minutes of warning (ground shock vs speed of sound in air) to kiss each other goodbye before the entire area is scoured to bedrock by the blast and pyroclastic flow. It’s a risk I’m happy to take if it means avoiding tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, humidity, palmetto bugs and worst of all, the MN state bird, the mosquito.
To the everything is gone gentleman:
Two more feet and you’d have been gone, You can get another car or house Dude.
Selective memory?
I can personally recall:
Winter storm ’96 flooding the Willamette and Chehalis
Chehalis river flood 2007 cut off much of the peninsula for a week or so
Deadly landslide in North Bend in 2014
And although it was a bit before my time, I understand that The Columbus Day Storm was essentially the not-so-tattered remnants of a pacific Typhoon that smacked the PNW.
Those are just off the top of my head…I’m sure there’s more. We are not immune.
Barb and my area of concern is her house in Bellevue. North Bend is only a concern if I-90 is closed. Chehalis and the peninsula are not our concern. There are houses in Seattle built on cliffs that could collapse. Not our concern. As nice as the view might be, that is not a situation we would ever put ourselves in (even if we could afford a house with a view like that).
We are high enough (~825′ above sea level) on the side of, a not particularly steep, mountain. No serious flooding has ever occurred near her house. It would have to be a extremely large tsunami to directly cause us harm here. None of the previous volcanic eruptions in the area have resulted in pyroclastic flows at our location. We do have an occasional Snow Apocalypse but with relatively minor preparation we can deal with those.
The number one thing I worry about around here is an earthquake. The number two thing is political violence. The best solution for both of those issue is to not be here. The next best solution is to be able to leave and be comfortable someplace else when things get “spicy” here. I’m working on that.