What In Blazes?

My sister has written to advise that she and her husband have been allowed to return to their home. The wildfire apparently came within about 100 feet of their garage (separate structure from the house), and there is now a fire line bulldozed across the uphill portion of their property. For point of reference, the fire in their neighborhood is known as the "Squire Fire," and is not the massive one in Oregon's Lake County currently receving national attention.

One coworker commented that the news keeps saying how dry everything is — isn't Oregon wet? Ah, yes, the great wet-Oregon myth. See, only the western 1/3 of the state receives the famed rain, but it's the most populated portion, and (because of the wetness) the prettiest and most-often photograhped. The eastern 2/3 (and, for that matter, much of the the Southwestern corner, where I grew up) are high-plains-like near-desert. It's a geography/climatology/geology lesson every Oregon child learns as they grow, but suffice it to say that the six months I lived in Eugene (appropriately, home of the University of Oregon Ducks) was the only time I experienced Oregon's "famed" weather.