First published Nov. 23, 2021 at 6:43 PM PST

Chris Sybrandy, a Skagit County dairy farmer, says he recently helped haul more than 40 dead animals out of barns for his friends nearby.

“I made a decision that I needed to help them take their cows out, so they didn’t have to take their own animals out,” Sybrandy says. “Having raised these cows from babies, I didn’t want them to have to take them out themselves.”

The worst of mid-November’s flood waters are slowly starting to recede in northern Washington, after about 100-thousand cattle were jeopardized, most of them by flood-rel...