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People joke about how much it rains here — but the rain is the whole reason our corner of the world looks the way it does. We live in a temperate rainforest, and the forest doesn’t just soak up the rain. In a real way, it helps make it.
Storms roll in off the Pacific carrying huge loads of water. When that wet air hits the Olympic Mountainsjust north of us, it’s forced upward, cools, and wrings out — like squeezing a wet sponge. Our valley catches several feet of rain a year; the Olympic rainforest, up in the mountains, catches more than twelve.
Then the forest gives some back. Trees pull water up from the ground and breathe it out through their needles — a process called transpiration — feeding the fog and clouds that drift through the treetops. A big forest quite literally helps keep its own air moist. Water, trees, and weather, all running in a loop.
Follow the loop: tap through the water cycle — or use the arrow keys — and see how the sea, the mountains, and the trees keep passing the same water around.
The Pacific holds an enormous amount of water. The sun warms the surface and it evaporates — rising into the air as invisible vapor.
All that rain becomes our streams — and salmon need them cold. The forest canopy shades the water, and fallen logs carve out deep, cool pools where young fish hide and rest.
Tree roots hold the soil in place so rain soaks in instead of washing mud into the rivers. Clean gravel is exactly what salmon need to lay their eggs.
Sitka spruce, western hemlock (our state tree), western redcedar, and Douglas-fir grow huge here, draped in moss and ferns. A single fallen 'nurse log' can grow a whole row of new trees.
It’s the same loop the salmon page follows from the other end — see the salmon’s journey →
These giant trees are also why Montesano exists. Grays Harbor was once one of the great timber capitals of the country, and lumber built this town. Today much of the forest is tree farms— planted, grown, harvested, and replanted on a cycle — which makes forestry its own kind of science: how to grow strong trees, keep the streams healthy, and take care of a resource that takes decades to come back. Some of these state “trust” forests are even managed to help pay for building Washington’s public schools — so in a real way, the forest helps build the classroom. The rainforest is both our wilderness and our workplace.
Follow a salmon from a gravel nest in the Satsop or Wynoochee all the way to the ocean and back.
Every spring, hundreds of thousands of shorebirds refuel on our mudflats on their way to the Arctic.
The Chehalis is one of Washington’s biggest flood corridors — here’s why, and what we do about it.
A fault offshore, a giant wave in the year 1700, and why we practice for the next one.
The Satsop cooling towers on the skyline — a true story of energy, engineering, and economics.
A logging mill pond right above town became one of Washington’s early state parks.
North America’s largest elk, in herds around our valley and the Olympic Mountains.
Satsop, Wynoochee, Chehalis — our rivers carry Indigenous names and a deep salmon culture.
Real Montesano numbers to play with — salmon returns, rainfall, elk, floods, and towers.