Flood water swamps a field south of Olympia. (January 08, 2009)
Mike Kane/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
I-5 blanketed by flood water in Centralia, Wash. (January 08, 2009)
Mike Kane/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Homes covered by flood waters in Centralia, Wash. (January 08, 2009)
Mike Kane/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Todd Trepanier with Washington State Department of Transportation surveys damage to an offramp on Interstate 5 near Snoqualmie Summit. (January 08, 2009)
Joshua Trujillo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A man takes a break against a traffic sign while wading through floodwater in Snoqualmie, Wash. Rain and high winds lashed Washington state Wednesday, causing widespread avalanches, mudslides, flooding and road closures from rapid snowmelt and the three main highways across the Cascade Range were closed. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) (January 08, 2009)
Blame recurring floods on a triple whammy (click here)
Logging, climate change, developers
By ROBERT McCLUREP
I REPORTER
2006: Flooding throughout Western Washington shuts highways, causes power outages and forces scores of residents to flee their homes. A state of emergency blankets 18 counties....
At least 30,000 forced to flee from heavy rains and flooding (Click title to entry - thank you)
Puyallup River Valley among evacuation areas
By AMY ROLPH AND JOHN IWASAKIP-I REPORTERS
PUYALLUP -- For thousands of people, home Wednesday night became a church basement or a school gymnasium. Maybe they got lucky and stayed with a relative or friend.
Heavy rain and surging rivers forced more than 30,000 people in Western Washington from their permanent homes. They fled Jones Creek in Acme in Whatcom County and the Puyallup River in Fife and Orting and other rivers in between....
This is how flooding starts and continues to destruction and beyond. The flooding doesn't start simply by one rain storm either. Flooding occurs due to SATURATED ground. There can be flooding that occurs with large storms such as hurricanes when the volume of water is simply more than any river bank can hold, but, the flooding in the Northwest is unrelated to any traditional high volume storms.
The flooding occuring in the Northwest is due to a significant history of high rainfall over the last several years. The ground is saturated and at the first drop of rain the streams and rivers begin to rise. What normally took a extraordinary volume of water to achieve can now be seen with small volumes.
In the series of pictures below, the water rose in the stream, found volumes that challenged the banks, overflowed those banks and began to inundate farms and towns.
continued...
January 7, 2008
Onalaska, Washington
Photographer states :: River waters running through the trees. 
Photographer states :: Newaukum River in Onalaska today.
Photographer states :: Newaukum River in Onalaska today.
