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Lately, I've been pondering a new concept we've dubbed the "Pendulum Theory" to describe various Sandpoint-related issues.
The first issue is the weather. As I've noted before, no one can figure it out. The weather gurus are constantly not just wrong in their predictions, but really wrong. As in, they'll say it will be sunny and it rains. Or vice versa. The only thing that is predictable about North Idaho weather is that it's unpredictable. Akin to Newton's Law, for every weather action, there's a reaction. Much like a pendulum swinging back and forth, when it comes to the weather, the more awful and prolonged one extreme is, the more awful, or prolonged the next one seems to be as well.
For example, this spring we had an extreme amount of rain. We actually tied with Seattle's record of 100 continuous days of precipitation. It marked a new low in gray dismal weather. This summer, the pendulum went the other way and the reaction to the extreme rain was extreme sun. We received almost no rain from mid July until the end of August. Apparently in Coeur d'Alene, it was the driest it's ever been during that time period in recorded history. The plants are crispy and crunchy. (This week, it finally rained a bit and cooled off, much to the relief of area firefighters!)
It seems like the pendulum is finally swinging on the real estate market as well. At long last, presumably thanks to rising interest rates and the whole property tax mess, the real estate market is falling again. The investors are moving on to the "next big thing" and prices are coming down to more reasonable levels. In our neighborhood, the listing price on one tiny house has dropped by $60K and may finally sell, since the price is no longer completely absurd.
Another indicator is that in our Sandpoint Q and A forum, I received the first sort of worried question from a reader about excessive growth in Sandpoint because of the publicity in the last few years. As I told her, it's not the "undiscovered" place it was a few years ago.
Returning to my theory, it could be that the pendulum will swing from all this sunshine to the worst winter ever. I figure a really bad winter will probably make some of the starry-eyed newcomers, Sandpoint resident wanna-bes, and newbie real estate agents a little more circumspect about what life in Sandpoint is really like. No place is perfect after all, and those glossy magazine articles never show pictures from the gray, snowy days when you can't get out of your driveway.
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