FORKS — She doesn’t yet know when, but Forks Mayor Nedra Reed has got her gun and she plans to use it.
“It’s a girly gun,” Reed said of her spangled orange-and-turquoise pistol.
It’ll do the job, however, when the day of drenching comes.
That day will be the culmination of a contest that began last summer.
Reed, believing her city’s temperatures to be superior, challenged Sequim to a duel.
She believed Forks’ average highs, from May through September, would be higher than Sequim’s.
The deal was that if The Weather Channel proved her right, Reed would shoot her Sequim counterpart, Mayor Walt Schubert, with a squirt gun.
Back in June, Schubert declared that victory was certain for his sunny city.
But Price & Crandall, a Forks bookkeeping firm, certified the temperature averages and told Reed last week that she had won.
“To be perfectly honest, I am surprised,” Reed said.
“When I go to Sequim, the sun is always shining.
In Forks, there can be a torrential downpour, “yet the sky over the eastern end of Clallam County is clear and beautiful.”
But this was not a who’s-the-clearest contest.
Forks would have lost that, to put it mildly.
In September, for example, Forks got 4.84 inches of rain while Sequim saw 0.84 inches.
Reed, for her part, will rain on Schubert in Forks’ Tillicum Park, 420 Tillicum Lane.
The two mayors have yet to set a date for their meeting. Both are checking their schedules, Reed said Friday.
Schubert said he is ready to do Reed’s bidding.
“I will go to Forks when Nedra says, and take my lickin’s,” he said.
