The Flood Hath Commenced and Receeded...

Double Rainbow over the flood waters, in front of the windmills, the store, and the fuel barge.

Our annual flood: perhaps counter-intuitively, it's something everyone anticipates and gets really excited about. This year's flood was just right -- arriving on a Saturday morning, cresting on Saturday evening, and it was over by Sunday morning.  (the only thing that was a bummer was that if it happens on a weekday, we get an early out of school!)

 I don't know if it qualifies as a tsunami or not, because it's not started with an earthquake, but by really strong winds and really high tides.  It's a regular fall occurance, so it must be related to the jet stream or currents or fall storm patterns or something (anyone know more and want to enlighten me?).  People in Hooper Bay say that winter can't begin until it floods -- I mean, and it's a good thing, because if it flooded after things began to freeze, it would undermine all the solid, safe ice forming on ponds and sloughs that make it safe to travel by snowmobile. 

But, as a weather junkie, I am very much into the flood. It's a cool wild weather event, and no one gets hurt, very rarely is any property damaged, and then when it's over we can go on with our lives. To get these pictures, I got drenched to the skin (even through really good raingear) and pelted with hail, and blown around the road on the honda.  That's what I call fun! (especially since I got to go to my nice warm home afterwards and get all snuggled in with my fluffy slippers.)This is taken from my backdoor, which usually just looks out on tundra:

The next day, we went to the beach to see the wild waves, to see if anything exciting got washed up on shore (I'm still hunting for one of those old glass floats that used to hold up nets).  I found a torn bit of old net that had cool barnacles on it and took it home for a decoration in the porch.  But we still had fun seeing the wild beach:

Complete with wild monkeys:

 At Esther's dad Roy's house, where Jasmine and Avery live, Fancy and Draco's sister Taki had 5 puppies.  Check out Fancy and Draco's cute nephews and nieces!