Busy. A bullfrog holds court every evening and there’s an ******* heron that seems to enjoy terrorizing a group of ducks in the pond immediately behind the house. I downvote him every time it happens but it doesn’t seem to be helping.
NW OR and SW WA haven't had a proper (55+mph) south windstorm since April 2017. Probably the longest streak on record at this point.
Although somewhat ironically, the last 3-4 years have still placed some of the most extreme stress on the local trees that we've seen since Typhoon Freida. With the snow/ice of February 2021, heatmageddon in 2021, the April 2022 freak snowstorm, and then the east wind and ice in January this year. Collectively all that has culled out a lot of the weaklings.
This January's wind was pretty crazy, a house nearby got crushed by a huge fallen tree because of the wind. I think that's the strongest wind I've seen in a while, but we haven't really had many strong south wind storms recently from what I remember.
The snow event on 1/17/2024 here was highly localized. A friend of mine was driving back from Everett and reported no snow whatsoever in the nearby cities of Lynnwood, Edmonds, and most of Shoreline, which are just north of me on the I-5 corridor. Guess I lucked out.