A sunny oasis in an otherwise stormy state. A deck of high cirrus clouds is starting to break as a Mt. Emily Lumber Company Shay and a string of log bunks travels eastbound past some of the spectacular geology that typifies Central Oregon. Although it was raining and gloomy to the northwest in Portland this day, and it was snowing to the east near the Idaho border, here in the central part of the state, we're protected from a lot of the precipitation by the Cascade Mountains just to our west. Moist weather systems moving in off the Pacific typically rain themselves out on the western slopes of the Cascades, leaving center of the state rather dry, with just over 10 inches of rain per year. On this particular day, the little City of Prineville was a sunny oasis for train chasers, in the middle of an otherwise stormy state of Oregon.
