Thanks to El Niño and the resulting current weather pattern, it feels like it hasn't stopped raining in the Northwest.
In the last seven days, some places along the Pacific Northwest Coast have gotten ten or more inches of rain.
By the end of this week, that number could be tripled. Yes, tripled.
The wet weather pattern still in place this week is forecasting between a foot and a foot and a half of rain along some parts of the northwest coast of the United States by Friday.
This means flooding. The Storm Shield weather app has been alerting residents of the flood watches, warnings, and advisories from the southwest coast of Oregon to the northwest coast of Washington and back to Idaho and western Montana.
Despite the flooding, all of this rain is helping to ease the drought in the Pacific Northwest.
More than 60 percent of Oregon and almost half of Washington are under an "extreme drought," the second worst category of drought according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
All of the rain isn't expected to remedy the drought in a week, but it'll certainly help.
When it rains this much this quickly, a lot of the water is lost to run-off because the soil simply can't absorb all the water fast enough. On the other hand, when the precipitation falls as snow in the mountains, that's just like money in the bank, saved for a rainy day - or in this case, another really long dry spell.
