Oh, your standard hardware-store type rain gauge will work fine. Typical capacity is 5" and I've never (ok ONCE in 10 years) had more than 5" in 24 hours.

We got about an inch over night here. Not too unusual, but October's total is going to be a bit more than average. Still nothing like October a few years ago when we got 16" in one month, and 10" of that fell in two days!

Creeks are only starting to rise here. The soil was still pretty dry from summer and has been soaking it all up and nothing much gets into the creeks until the soil is full - unless you're in an urban area with lots of pavement. I have noticed the urban rivers like the Green River, south of Seattle, started rising some weeks ago.

All in all, just a 'nother fall storm. It's always wild with the first few good ones, 'cause we've forgotten, and this year we're all still freaked by last December's cyclone, and the leaves are just now coming down and they're blocking the storm drains. Times like this I'm glad my block has no storm drains.

Burning hot and dry far too long? You must be in a banana belt! :) I think it's wet far too long myself.

I have no idea how much it has rained here. I heard our side of town had quite a rain shower once yesterday, but I wasn't here at the time.

Sounds like WA got better weather in summer and better weather now. Oregon City must be jinxed with extremes. Had a big landslide here from Thursday's storm.

Today's Weather alerts:
http://weather.kgw.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?brand=kgw&query=Portland,OR#WAT

Area Flood Advisory
Statement as of 8:03 am PDT on October 20, 2007

The National Weather Service in Portland has issued an

* urban and small stream flood advisory for...
northwestern Clackamas County in northwest Oregon...
this includes the city of Oregon City...
northwestern Marion County in northwest Oregon...
western Multnomah County in northwest Oregon...
this includes the city of Portland downtown...
eastern Washington County in northwest Oregon...
this includes the city of Hillsboro...
northeastern Yamhill County in northwest Oregon...
this includes the city of McMinnville...
southwestern Clark County in southwest Washington...
this includes the city of Vancouver downtown...

* until 200 PM PDT.

* At 803 am PDT National Weather Service Doppler radar indicated very
heavy rain over the northern Willamette Valley.

Additional rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches are possible in the
advisory area as rainfall will continue today in the unstable air
mass.

Excessive runoff from heavy rainfall will cause ponding of water on
highways... streets and underpasses... in urban areas with poor or
overwhelmed drainage... and will also cause elevated levels on small
creeks and streams.

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?wfo=pqr&sid=pqr&pil=afd

" .... SHORT TERM...VERY COLD UNSTABLE AIR OVER THE NORTHERN PORTION
OF THE FORECAST AREA THIS MORNING. SATELLITE IMAGERY SHOWS DEEP
CONVECTION OVER THE AREA. DOPPLER RADAR INDICATING VERY HEAVY RAIN ASSOCIATED WITH THESE STORMS. HAVE ISSUED URBAN AND SMALL STREAM FLOOD ADVISORY FOR THE AREA OF STRONGEST SHOWERS IN THE NORTH WILLAMETTE VALLEY. THERE IS ALSO MORE LOW LEVEL SHEAR THIS MORNING WHICH FAVORS DEVELOPMENT OF FUNNEL CLOUDS AND EVEN POSSIBLE COLD CORE TOUCH DOWN. THIS COLD AIR CONVECTION COMBINED WITH WESTERLY UPSLOPE FLOW OF 30KT AT MID MOUNTAIN LEVELS SHOULD PRODUCE HIGH PRECIP RATES OVER THE S WASHINGTON CASCADES AND NORTH OREGON CASCADES AND HAVE UPGRADED SNOW ADVISORY THERE TO HEAVY SNOW WARNING .... "

Ratherbgardening, from posts during the summer discussing relative weather to location, I am indeed in a strange pocket of exceptionally hot dry summer suffering. Blech! Also in an intense watershed near confluence of Willamette and Clackamas Rivers which makes winter a complete unmitigated swamp.

Will be seeking a more moderate ideal location somewhere in upper NW WA for the golden retirement years.

Not "insane" amounts near Medford / Applegate Valley - but plenty.

Nice actually.

Starting to green the fields and hills a bit before winter, while temps are warm enough for new grass growth.

M. D. Vaden of Oregon

Up here on Vancouver Island, it seems we've gone from summer straight into winter, the only thing even remotely like fall are the falling leaves.
Already we've had some torrential rainfalls and flooding basements on parts of the island. As a rule we have a lovely indian summer in our neck of the woods, not this year. We've been warned that this is just the beginning of a very stormy winter.

A......

The rain's been seemingly biblical in Southwest Washington as well, and i have a question: I recently planted up a bed of figs, blueberries and azaleas. I realize there are probably many variables that might play into the answer, but could this intense and sudden saturation adversely effect root spread, which i understand to be the whole point of planting in autumn?

{{gwi:125508}}

Estreya - Get rid of the berms around your plants. Berms are for keeping water in in the summer. Don't berm plants planted in fall. They will drown.

If the intense saturation were going to adversely affect root spread, what would you do about it?

Yes, probably it will delay root growth, if the soil truly is saturated, and for a significant amount of time. Roots need air as well as water to grow, and saturated soil by definition has its air spaces filled with water rather than air. SW WA is a lot more clayey than up here so your soil likely is quite wet and going to stay that way.

So - whaddya gonna do about it?? you can't make it stop raining. You can't turn time back and make it not have rained. Your soil is going to be wet. Oh well.

In clay soil it is critical to do your fall planting early enough that the plants are in and settled before the soil gets saturated. In our glacial gravelly till up here in Puget Sound area, that is not a concern. We can plant all winter long! because the soil is never saturated for more than a few minutes it seems. Clay soil? different story. When I gardened in CA adobe clay, ironically enough, I could not plant in winter at all even though the air temps were a good 10-20 degrees higher than here. Why? cold wet saturated clay killed new roots, where gravelly soil takes 2-3 times as much rain and just passes it on through without getting saturated or particularly cold.

However! nothing to be done about that now, except getting rid of those berms! You had no way to know that it would rain this much this early in the season. And that slope they're on will help the soil to drain off. There's always an element of chance in gardening, and we're always at the mercy of the weather.

We've also had lots of rain. Severe wind too when this storm blew in. My husband's co-worker had a massive Cottonwood take out his deck, awnings, and one dormer on his house. We have a lot of clean-up to do as well when it finally dries up a bit. Lots of debris everywhere.

Reg_pnw7, thanks very much for your suggestion! Hopefully, i've accomplished what you advised. Since the first picture was taken, i actually laid down a layer of mulch. It my understanding that mulch should never touch the "crown" of a plant (am i using that term correctly?), so i did leave a little cup-like space around the wood. You're correct that the whole bed is on quite a slope, and the holes were amended with lots of peat moss.

I realize there are no guarantees, but does your experience suggest these plants will survive the winter? Is there anything else i can do?
{{gwi:1091722}}

PS: My apologies for sort of hijacking this thread. :)

It's all about water, and roots, and rain, and drainage ... hoping my swamp roots like this. Yesterday entire yard a lake, every tree sitting in deep pool of water (they almost all have well berms), and to my shock today all the standing water is gone. We put so many large flat rocks as dams in the creeklets to slow the water down to prevent erosion and also to retain more in spring/summer, didn't think it would still drain so fast. Quite warm out, 63 here, sun was out for a while, really nice.

Estreya, looks to me (just a newbie) like your trees will do just fine. That's a definite slope there for water to trickle down. I've got a baby fig tree in a really wet place and it's loving it, slurping it up and getting big for a 1st year. Also have 3 blueberry bushes and several azaleas and they all want the water. The hard part is keeping them happy with enough moisture in the burning hot summer here.

Thank goodness we have so much water -- Atlanta may run out, SE USA in drought, Santa Ana fires burning part of LA today -- we're very fortunate. I thank the Lord for the rain. Yesterday morning though it was getting excessive after so many days of driving downpours.

Praying it stays moist and warm for the roots to grow grow grow this Autumn.

Roots aren't going to "wait" for drier conditions, the dampness would be a factor primarily if it got so wet the roots suffocated and deteriorated as a result.

Intact roots elongate in fall, if roots are disturbed (cut) at planting there may not be so much action that first fall. New roots appear in spring, when chemicals sent to the root system by opening dormant (overwintering) branch tip buds prompt this.

While we are commenting on the southwest WA planting the evergreen azaleas are too far apart and the figs are too close together; these will also be liable to overwhelm the blueberries. I'd put the azaleas closer together or dig the blueberries up and put them between the azaleas. Or move the figs over to the south wall of the house, where unless shaded by taller trees in future they will be much happier than in the open. If they are both the same variety you may need only the one specimen, unless you plan to process figs or crows come and help themselves to much of the crop each year.

Hi, bboy! Thanks for your thoughts. Your point about the azaleas is well taken, and to be honest, i purchased and planted just the six with the overall landscaping budget in mind. I thought i'd see how they fill in, and get more over time as the budget allows.

As for the figs, i'm pretty sure they're about 20 feet apart. Is that still too close? It's my understanding they respond well to being pruned to size, so i thought they could snuggle up a bit in the bed. :)

Cascadians, i really do believe that for every gardener who prays for rain, there's one on another part of the globe who beacons only sun. For our part, it's supposed to dry up considerably next week, which i'm sure our respective roots will thoroughly enjoy. :)

My experience with heading back fig trees is that they respond by forking and producing several long shoots where there was only one before, these also being more slender and whippy than what was started with - as do many other trees. There may also be a problem with figs not being produced right away on these replacement shoots, so that if you kept up with the pruning (might need to do this twice per year to maintain control) you might also cut back the fruiting significantly.

Check some pruning books and web sites that talk about pruning figs to see what is expected to work.

Estreya, I'm not going to recommend that you dig up your plants, but I will recommend that you not use peat moss as a soil amendment in the future. Peat moss stays saturated in wet conditions, instead of draining, and can drown roots, especially in clay. When the soil dries in summer the peat will turn into a water-repelling brick. Ok to use in pots, but not in the ground.

Compost and leaf mold are what you want as a soil amendment. Not peat, and not sand, and not potting soil. But, no point digging up what's already planted. The slope should give them enough drainage.

Much as it's rained, the soil, at least up here, still is not saturated so everything is soaking in pretty quickly with very little runoff so far.

Ah, thank you Reg_pnw7, for your feedback! I'm learning, learning, learning all the time ... Believe it or not, the nursery suggested peat moss as an amendment (along with a soil conditioner) to give the blueberries the acidity they require. Plus, i think someone on one of the other forums also recommended it, especially for blueberries. Mind you, i'm bringing this up not to disagree with you, but to underscore how dizzying this all can be for a new gardener! Everyone's got a different opinion, and there's no doubt in my mind that most every shared opinion is correct given whatever variables a person factors in ...

I love it. I love the whole process! We live and learn ... i hope you're right, and my newly planted everythings manage to thrive. Maybe i should feed them scrambled eggs every morning (or am i dating myself with an early Doonesbury reference?).

:)

Estreya it's probably great for the blueberries because they're bog plants and love the extra moisture & acidity. Maybe not as good for the others though like Reg mentioned. The whole idea of amending holes instead of whole beds is a little dicey and usually only works good if the plant is a real water hog. No mater what you amend with, a hole tends to attract more water.
I too don't think you'll be real happy with the performance of those azaleas out there in the open by themself like that.
Cascadians this fall's rain is killing me. I have dozens of fancy brugmansia seedlings that I just can't get dried out enough. I lost a couple crucial months growth from the extra rain.
While we're hijacking threads, ;) Bboy (or anyone else) do you have experience with fig cuttings? I started a few and forgot them indoors, too warm. I read somewhere they need to be cool so they'll root without leafing too soon. Well I got a new leaf and roots. You think I need to treat it like one of my tender tropicals all winter? I'm afraid it's too late to let it get cold now, not sure.
- Tom

Grrrnthumb, i learned about the hole amendment controversy! The "container effect" totally makes sense to me, as does the benefit of amended soil in the initial phases of establishment. Oh my gosh, i had so many different opinions crashing around in my cruller before i finally did my plantings this year. It's been interesting to strike a balance between all the differing opinions and what my gut tells me to do. I'm hoping i've made the right decisions this year, but only time will tell ...

As for hijacking the thread, please please do! I love conversations that go this way and that and back this way again. Why should it be any different here? :)

Thank you for your thoughts, and i hope you get your answers about the fig cuttings. I'm interested too!

Since Sunday I've been especially thanking God for all the rain, watching the inferno consuming California, their Fire Hurricane. I cannot imagine the grief of millions of ppl who are now losing their plants and gardens and all their hard work, and many their very homes, to these ravaging Santa Ana winds and drought. Plus it's 90 degrees there! with 80mph howling winds blowing burning embers and sooty smoke everywhere.

They're having trouble evacuating now, over 1/2 Million people, because so many roads are closed and there's flaming debris falling. Electricity is going out, cell phones are jammed, water pressure is too low, air quality is dangerously unhealthy and the fires are growing out of control.

I pray the winds there stop and cooling ocean breezes come in. They need rain, steady gentle rain, urgently.

The last 2 days here in Oregon City have been warm and brilliantly sunny, 80 degrees on my deck, absolutely gorgeous, and the plants are glorying in every second of it, after having been completely saturated with ionized heavy rain.

Do you think a bunch of drought-fire-weary Californians will move up here? Water-rich especially Washington State must look beckoning now.

Just returned from southern California myself and I'm very glad to have missed the worst of it. The Malibu fire had just started early Sunday morning but when we drove up to Venice midmorning the smoke was already hanging in this heavy layer over south LA county. Drove back through the passes from Palm Springs late Saturday only to learn that they are on fire as well and the road we traveled is currently closed!

I am very relieved my sister lives right on the coast but not near any major canyons, so hopefully she is safe. Although, she is pretty well ringed by fires, being midway between Malibu and San Diego and with fires burning in the canyons to the east. When we spoke yesterday, she said ash was everywhere, the sun was obscured by a thick haze and you could write your name in the film of ash on her computer screen! Laguna Beach did suffer from a pretty devasting brush fire in the early 90's and they have gone to great lengths to reduce their fire hazards but this current situation sure illustrates how easily these things can spring up and race with abandon, consuming everything in their path. I feel very bad for those in more vulnerable situations and I hope things improve there rapidly but conditions are not on their side :-((

As to SoCalifornians moving north because of this, I wouldn't look to a huge exodus. They readily put up with smog and poor air quality, abyssmal traffic conditions, the possibility of landslides and continual earthquakes of varying degrees of severity, not to mention annual brushfires prompted by the heat and Santa Ana's. In exchange they enjoy an incredibly temperate and balmy climate and those killer beaches. Few seem to be ready to give that up in favor of damp, gray NW winters that last forever :-) And there is that California lifestyle that just is not duplicated here........thank goodness!

California is so very dry this time of year. The Fall right before we moved up here our pumpkins rot because it was in the 90's right up till Halloween. I lived very close to the Oakland Hills when we had the October 20th Firestorm in '91. Very scary. A very beautiful part of the Bay Area was destroyed. Homes with three-bridge views. Gorgeous neighborhoods of old Craftsmen and Tudor homes gone. In fact, it was recommended that when people re-built that they should not plant Eucalyptus trees. They were a big part of the problem. There are groves of them in the Oakland and Berkeley Hills. During the fire they would just explode.

I have friends just east of Escondido near San Diego in Valley Center, and good friends in Trabuco Canyon southeast of LA. Hope everything is OK and that these fires will be put out soon! Thank you firefighters!

To Estreya,
A half million dollar home should have a landscape budget of at least 25,000 minimum. You have good bones, good conditions that deserve better than what you have.

I'm sorry, muddydogs, but i'm not clear on your point. Can you elaborate?

Estreya I think he's assuming 1) That you have a brand-new house, 2) That it was built by a builder 3) That your builder skimped on the lanscape budget, and 4) That full backyard landscaping is usually included with new houses.

A lot of assumptions. :)

I thought they just did some front yard landscaping, if any at all.

I have never been impressed with builder landscaping. Never.
They usually put in the front yard landscaping as cheap as possible and with limited knowledge. When I was a landscape contractor I refused almost every builder who offered me jobs. Not enough money to do a job I was willing to put my name on, including The Street of Dreams one year.
On the other hand, I've never seen a builder impressed with my carpentry 'skills'.

I have been keeping up with my rain gauge in Astori and we have not been getting as much rain there (surprisingly) as Oregon City. I was last out at my place in early October and there had only been less than 9" since July (when I put in the gauge). I will be going up this weekend and will check, but my online source tells me that during the month of October there has been no more than a couple of inches. By the way, Oregon City is my home town, how is the Willamette doing below the falls?

I am still praying for all the people, animals and plants who have been dislocated and harmed by the California wildfires and all the smoke and ash in the air. It would be very depressing to go from living in a beautiful area with plant and wildlife to the charred barren wasteland they now have to see and smell. Glad for all who got back here safely.

After all that rain a couple weeks ago, it's now dry again, dry and freezing in the early morning and dry and warm in the afternoon. Today I hooked my sprinklers back up and am watering and will have to go over my trees with the hose nozzle. The creeklets have no water left in them. We just planted a Banksia robur in a creeklet yesterday and even deep down it's dry. Unbelievable! At least it's cool enough that it doesn't evaporate so quickly after watering. And there's still dew in the morning.

Sorry I haven't seen the Willamette below the falls for months -- will look next time have the chance. Going to buy that rain gauge this weekend.

The morning frosts have convinced the leaves to change and drop in earnest now. The frogs are still croak-singing. There's a young sharp-shinned hawk haunting the bird feeders. A new group of rats have moved into the crawl space -- when it rains hard and the seasonal streams begin flowing they follow the water up ... and then it gets cold so they want to move indoors to nice warm crawlspaces. Spent yesterday spraying that foam hardening stuff in any tiny vent hole possible. Will set 20 traps tomorrow. Poison is not a good idea -- the rats die in the walls and you can't get them out and the stench is unbearable.

I don't care if the rats live in the yard but since they chew wires and start a good percentage of house fires I don't want them in my walls.

Rats also carry diseases. The ones that climb into fruit trees and gnaw the fruit, run through crawl spaces beneath roofs are wharf rats, also called roof rats. Another name for them is plague rat. That last one should help convey my original point.

Lab rats are Norway rats. These live on the ground.