Why the Green Mountains are so Green

The view from sunny Vermont.

Greening up them Green Mountains with torrents of rain.

In a word....rain. Or perhaps I should say precipitation since 10 feet of snow in the Winter isn't really rain. And as far as precipitation is concerned, we get about the same amount of annual precipitation as Seattle, Washington, a city known for its dreary rainyness. That would be in excess of 35 inches a year. To give you some idea of how much rain that is, just west of Seattle on the Olympic peninsula is the only temperate rain forest in the world. That rain forest gets a little more rain than Seattle and Vermont but not much. But even with our significant average precipitation, these last couple of weeks up here in the North Country have been an exercise in learning to live with "higher than average" precipitation. It has rained, and rained hard, every day for almost two weeks. We've had every kind of rain there is, drizzle, steady, pouring, cloud burst and even rain of biblical proportions. The good news? We haven't had to water the garden for some time now. The bad news? I need to use a boat to walk the dogs.