When we awoke on December 27 the water was much higher than normal.

Sunshine is mystified by the disappearance of a place to take her morning stroll and do her business.

The hot tub is getting its feet wet. The yard is totally gone. The ducks are keeping their distance. Our decorative boat is floating high but fence posts are still visible. Time 8:15 am.

Here the water is about 4 inches below the original wood deck. You can see the blue canoe safe and high. To the right are two kayaks that were not secured at this time. Landscaped berm is largely disappearing and bridge to berm is barely above water.

Ducks are keeping their distance. Decorative spruce is barely above water.

This is the orchard and wood storage. Bobcat is getting its tires washed and dump trailer is seeing water as well. time: 9:28

Water is now nearly to the road and flooding the driveway we started to construct last summer.

This is water in our original garage. It has around six or seven inches of water throughout.

Here the water has floated the original wood deck. Here it is flush with the concrete deck which means it is about 8 inches higher than normal. There are steps to the original wood deck that are floating on one side. The bridge is nearly submerged. The hot tub is now partially submerged with motor and electronics below water.

Not shown is me entering the water in my underwear to retrieve these two bad boys. I was up to my arm pits in water as the kayaks were heading for open water.

The Costco chairs here are partially submerged. The next day I took photos and measured the water to be 18 inches below where it is here. Both tides were over 16 feet. The one here was 16.2 and the next day 16.1. The 18 inch difference was due to a perfect storm of contributing factors: record low barometric pressure, rapid snow run off, heavy rains, and strong winds driving water into the sound and then down to our cove.

This is 25 hours later. The wood deck dropped back to its original height and the bridge seems well above the water. 

We became aware we were in a flood zone five years ago. What that means is to do any new construction you want to be out of the zone. So you get a surveyor to establish where 13' above sea level is and you build 24" or more above that. By luck our original remodel is slab on grade concrete with in floor heating. And the elevation is exactly 24" above 13'. So our new garage stayed dry by about 3 inches and the existing addition concrete floor was about 11 inches above this freakish higher than ever tide. Since we were planning to make changes to the new living, kitchen, bed and bath area....we will be raising those one step higher....just under 8 inches.