Bomb Cyclone

 So, I'm writing this from a friend's house, about 15 minutes south of Grubb Street. Because Grubb Street is currently without Internet. 

You may have heard that the Puget Sound was hit recently by a "Bomb Cyclone", which is a scary term and in real life is no picnic either. A Bomb Cyclone is a tropical depression that develops quickly (The Bomb part) over the ocean, creating high winds (The Cyclone) along its periphery. It is not a hurricane, though it can have hurricane-force winds. 

And what it does is pull in air from the surrounding area to power those winds. And in the Seattle area, this means that said winds get pulled through the mountain passes to the east of us. The passes are currently closing due to snowfall already, but the winds get HOV access. These winds get concentrated by the passes before blasting into the more settled foothills. 

And that's why its a bad thing for those living in the foothills. Whenever we get a bad windstorm, it's because the winds are coming out of the east, being pulled through the mountains. That's the case here.

Power went out at the height of the storm and stayed out for about 9 hours. The Lovely Bride had years ago (after the last outage) purchased a large cinder-block-sized battery and so got to hook up her CPAP machine there. I did not, and didn't want to take the chance of draining her battery too much. But we had some level of preparation. And we still had land-lines phones, functional cell phones, a gas stove in the bedroom and a gas stovetop in the kitchen. So we were not knocked down to "Little House on the Prairie" status. But a lot of folk (like, hundreds of thousands) lost power and a lot of them still don't have it restored, particularly in the valleys leading down from those windswept passes. 

Anyway, nine hours. Good work on the recovery from Puget Sound Energy. Our neighbors are on another line, and they are still out, but have an extension cord long enough to plug into our socket near the back yard, so their freezer is still running. 

But also, as the storm passed through, a large branch from one of the firs out front came down and neatly severed our Internet cable. So even when power got restored, we still were without Internet. So we called Comcast, and they sent out a guy. Guy shows up and explains that the area still does not have Internet service at large (something about a nearby Node being out), and until they repair the Node, they can't re-hook up the house. Something tells me that the "Node" may be on the same line as our unfortunate neighbors, so we'll have to wait until power comes back up for them, and then they can fix the node. And THEN they can come back an hook up the house again. 

No, Comcast has no idea when all this is going to happen. The guy's suggestion was to keep calling in to complain. Yay.

Anyway, we are Internet-less for the immediate future. A road crew from Kent came by the morning after the storm and cut up the fallen branch and hauled it away (just as I was coming out of the garage with a handsaw in hand and my face set with grim determination). So, good work Kent Road Crew.  And Wednesday morning consisted of cleaning up the mid-sized branches. Thursday is when we got the bad news that Comcast was neither as cool as Puget Sound Energy or the Kent Road Crew. And by Thursday afternoon I was already looking for a way to get back online.

Yahsee, my current gig (Senior Writer for Elder Scrolls Online - I don't know if I mentioned that), requires I get online to communicate with coworkers and put things into the engine. So no connectivity, no work. It was a forced vacation, and while I still had some PTO left for the year, I was planning on spending it elsewhere. And after two days of quietly reading in a warming waterbed, I was pretty much chomping at the bit to get back to it. 

So, I made some phone calls. Some friends were still without power at that point, but one had both power and connectivity, and I hauled my desktop down to his place and set up on his usually-unused dining room table. And then had to get a "wifi usb dongle" to hook everything up to the friend's Internet (at home I use a long Ethernet cable plugged directly into the router). But now I am back in business, such as it goes, for the foreseeable future. Just in time to lay down my tools for Thanksgiving.

I will update this when/if we get to the stage where I return to my former haunts. In the meantime, I am in a bit of exile here. But at least I can contact the outside world again.

More later, 

[The Updates: On Saturday our neighbors got their power and Internet back. Comcast's website said they could get to us by Wednesday. The Lovely Bride called them and got an appointment for the next day. Sunday morning a young man came out on his lonesome and hooked us back up. Good work, young man!]

Seattle Weather

When we moved to Seattle twenty-some years ago, I started encountering weather features and climate conditions that I hadn't encountered before, or had few references to. Here's a handy list for new arrivals:

Weather Forecast: Fiction. 

5-Day Forecast: Science Fiction. 

Mountain Day: We are surrounded by mountains - Cascades to the east, the Olympic range to the west. But when we say "The Mountain is Out" (and we do), we are talking about Mount Rainier (rah-NEER), which looms to the south like something out of Greek Myth.If we can see it from base to tip, we call it the "Full Mountain".  People are usually happy when we can see the Mountain, despite the fact that Rainier is an ACTIVE VOLCANO (not erupting, but not quite dead, either).

Sunbreaks: The opposite of Partly Cloudy, but rarer out here. It a term used from the Fall to Spring, and usually means "You might see some sun today." Most of the summer is pristine, blue, and cloudless. That's when your relatives from back East visit and tell you how nice it must be to live out here. You want people to stop moving to Seattle? Invite them out in the dead of winter.

June-uary: When we say "summer" in Seattle, we don't count the first two weeks in June. Sure, May is nice, with soft rain in the evenings and fogs in the morning, but a grey overcast dominates the landscape in early June, so much so that it gets its own month. Also called June Gloom.

Atmospheric River: A recent term, it reflects the fact that Washington State doesn't really have any large agricultural states to the west of it we can call up and ask for steady weather forecasts.What we often see on the doppler radar is the thick stream of heavy red bearing down on us. Makes the weathermen on the evening news excited.

Pineapple Express: When the atmospheric river commutes from Hawaii. Really makes the weathermen excited.

Convergence Zone: I mentioned the Olympics, they are a massive upthrust of mountain due west of us. They tend to stand in the way of the atmospheric rivers that buffet the coast. Of course, the weather tends to go AROUND this big chunk of mountains, so Seattle is often at the point where the weather coming around the northern side hits the weather coming around from the south. When they hit, we get interesting, local effects. So Kirkland can get heavy rain and hail while Kent gets nothing.

Rain Shadow: The flip side of the convergence zone. Because the mountains are in the way, some places get untouched by rain while it rains heavily to both the north and south. The Olympics become Seattle's umbrella, and like an umbrella, a treacherous wind can turn it inside out.

Microclimates: As a result of the differences in altitude, plus the rain shadow and convergence zone, microclimates mean that you can have radically different weather in relative close proximity. While in certain parts of the country, the saying is" If you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes" in Seattle it is "If you don't like the weather, drive fifteen miles."

Misting: What Seattlites call it when it really ISN'T raining. You don't need a slicker. You don't need an umbrella (a sign of being a tourist). It's just misting. Works up to the point when you start seeing hail.

Thunder:  A rarity. It happens maybe once a month, consists of one long, rolling peel. and people will talk about it at the office the next day. It is so cute to those who come out from the Midwest. 

Snowed In: More than a quarter inch on the roads. Everyone forgets how to drive. Archaic term now that everyone is working from home.

Snow Level: Snow is measured by altitude here, and as winter proceeds the snow level descends down from the mountains to the sea. So we really pay attention to where the snow level currently is. "Lowland Snow" sets off alarm bells and closes schools. Grubb Street is located at the 500 foot mark, just in case you were wondering. 

Seattle Freeze: Has nothing to do with the weather, but is as close as we get to feeling chilly. 

Black Ice: Not a uniquely Seattle phenomenon, its the scarier way of saying "It's a little slick out there".

Closing the Passes: The main east/west highways out of/into Seattle go over the Cascade Mountains, and as winter arrives, travel over them become perilous and often avalanche-y, until finally the passes are closed, sealing us off from the rest of the northern US. We're pretty happy with that.

Polar Vortex: Not so much a Seattle thing, this is a weather effect that has been picked up on the national reports. It is bitter cold with heavy snows and wind - what Wisconsin used to call "A pretty average winter".  The weakening of the Jet Stream around the Arctic Circle results is sudden bulges of cold air descending on the heart of of the country, giving Climate Skeptics the chance to complain "Where's your Global Warming, now?"

Pyroclastic Flow: We have an active volcano nearby (see Mountain Day, above). Someday, it will go off, and send a cascade of molten rock, hot mud, and melted snow down the surrounding valleys, including the Green River valley, where Renton, Kent, and Auburn lay. This is a reason that Grubb Street is up on a hill. Have a pleasant day. 

Subduction Zone: The Big One - that massive earthquake that will cause the West Coast to fall into the sea, belongs to us, Oregon and California, so it not unique to Seattle. However, we DO talk about the tectonic plates far out to sea that have the potential to slip and create a Tidal Wave, which, given the narrowing of the Straits leading to Puget Sound, will channel it like a shotgun blast at the city.

Tsunami Route: You can see signs occasionally. I'm not sure they're being kept in order. They are usually pointing towards higher ground (well, yeah), in case the subduction zone triggers a tidal wave that will swamp the low-level areas of the Sound.

Solstice: Solstice is an important holiday in Seattle. We are the furthest north major metropolitan center in the continental US. We are further north than most of the population of Canada. So this means that our day/night cycle takes wide swings back and forth during the year. In the summer months, we are used to the sun setting in the Northeast, and twilight showing up around 10 PM. In the winter months, we are looking commuting in the darkness both to and from work. Both are a bit wearing on the senses, and the Solstice is the moment when the pendulum reaches its furthest point, and starts slipping back.

Happy Solstice. More later.

A World Lit By Fire

Typical Snowstorm in Seattle

For the past four days, Grubb Street has been without power. It went out Thursday morning, and stayed out until Sunday afternoon/evening.

Let me lay out what happened. Seattle expected a major snowfall event this past week. Despite all the panic in the media, it DOES snow in Seattle, about once or twice a year, just enough to snarl everyone. Usually this is a snow that melts in a few hours. This was expected to be major, upwards of 12 inches, and while it was not expected to last long, we cued all the attendant panicking.

And Tuesday night it started, but produced only about 4-6 inches. Major roads were turned into impromptu sled hills, work was canceled, and things were pretty good. The dumbest thing we saw was the local news time driving around in the snow, as the driver gives an interview on camera about how you shouldn’t be driving around in the snow and giving an on-camera interview. Warm rain was expected, and that would be the end of it.

But we didn’t get warm rain, we got freezing rain instead, which left about a half-inch of ice on everything, with another inch of powder on top of it, and at that point the fun truly began.

Grubb Street lost power about 8:30 Thursday morning. The local trees could not handle the weight and started shedding branches. On yards. On houses. On highways. Power lines came down. The small pines out front looked like very depressed nuns, shrunken in their places. The temple bell out front, on its unstable, hand-repaired wooden frame, withstood huge cedar branches coming down on all sides, without a direct hit. The air was alive with snapping branches and the distant thunder of exploding pole transformers. And everything went dark.

And we held up pretty well. Mind you, being hardy Wisconsin expats, we already had massive flashlights and numerous candles, and a wind-up radio my parents got us several years ago (yes, it has a crank). And we also discovered that multiple energy delivery methods were a good thing. We had lost power, but kept the gas, and we had a gas stovetop and a gas fireplace in the bedroom (newly replaced). And we had a wood-burning fireplace and a side yard filled with the salvaged debris from previous years of blown-down branches and trees. So the house chilled down, but it was not bad.

The cell phone network was patchy for the first few days, but the land lines lasted into Friday before succumbing. So that was covered as well (Internet and cable were still shot as of Sunday night). The full idea was multiple systems made it much more bearable when the electricity went.

The Lovely Bride went pretty much full Little House on the Prairie, heating washwater on the fireplace top (until we remembered we had a GAS water heater and it was unaffected by the blackout). Our neighbor loaned us a gasoline-powered generator he was using for an evening in an attempt to keep the fridge cold, but in the end we just moved everything in peril out to the coolers in the garage (and the brisket and other frozen meats kept solid).  I cleaned up what I could but retreated to careful use of my iPad games (Tiny Towers, downloaded right before the storm) marshaled by computer battery to get work done, and used what sunlight I had to review hard copy. We sat in front of the fire and listened to jazz on the radio. .

And on Saturday, when the warm rain finally did arrive and most of the snow went away, I went to work, getting both a lot done AND recharging all my battery-operated devices.

And in the end, it worked out. Another two days would have been dire from the spoiled food and need for laundry, but in general its been a pretty good thing. We had the local neighbors gather out front as we cleared away some of the branches and chatted, and all ascertained we were in good spirits and health. Oh, and it will take a couple days for the waterbed to heat back up, but that’s small stuff compared to what a lot of people have gone through. All in all, we’re pretty good.

Thanks for asking.  More later,

Top Ten List

Beating the Late Show to it.

From the Home Office on Grubbstreet, here are the Top Ten things you're hearing Seattle natives talk about today (feel free to use a Letterman Voice to read this).

Number 10: Convergence Zone

Number 9: Microclimates. (Micro-climates. Micro Cli-mates).

Number 8: No, I'm sure a bus will be along at any moment, now.

Number 7: So, how do you put these chains ON?

Number 6: So, how do you get these chains OFF?

Number 5: OK, we're going to have a big snowstorm on Wednesday AND the Internet will be down? (Because, you know, Paul, Wiki and other sites are closing down to protest SOPA. SO-PA. Sounds like a Mexician desert treat).

Number 4: Meteorological cage match -  Cliff Mass vs. Al Roker.

Number 3: Wait, wait, we have a Pro Football team?

Number 2: No, I'm sure a snow plow will be along any moment now.

And the number one thing you're hearing Seattle natives talk about today:

MEGASTORM!

(Thank you Seattle Times, for adding a new word to the Seattle repertoire. As if we needed one more word to describe the weather).

More later,

Meanwhile, back on Cap Hill ...

It's snowing in Seattle.

More later,

Snow. My. God.

So, counting the physical time in the car, the dinner, the evening spent working at the friends' house, the sleeping at the friends' house, and the omelets in the morning, it took me just over 19 hours to get home yesterday.

No, I'm not talking about commuting from the East Coast. I'm talking about a normally thirty- to forty-minute commute from Bellevue (where my company is based) to Grubb Street (which in near Panther Lake on the East Hill of Kent - the key word here is "hill").

Yes, it is the start of the snow season here in Seattle, where madness rules on the streets and we all tip towards anarchy.

I thought I was smart. I had packed a travel bag on Monday morning and took it with me to work. I left the office early, at 4, before the sun went down. Little did I dream that it was already far too late and that I was doomed.

Doomed, I say! Already thick flakes were coming down, adding to a snowpack that had been accumulating all morning. An inch, maybe, and mere sundry in Pittsburgh terms, but in this land of insufficient plows and sparce sanding, enough to completely shut down the city. Already the roads were slick, and made worse by the fact that there were people who had no clue how to drive in snow (I'm looking at you, little miss "5 miles an hour with your flashers on" - thanks for completely snarling the traffic behind you for miles with your sociopathic rejection of standard commuter mores).

Still, only a half hour to reach Renton itself, at the base of the hill I needed to climb. Still daylight. But then everything fell apart. My first choice route up the hill was solidly blocked. OK, we go to the second. A half-hour later I am still not moving on my second choice. Another half-hour not moving at my third choice. Apparently there were accidents on I-5, and they were channeling the traffic onto the surface streets. At in the meantime the snow beneath my tires had become ice and things had a hard time moving even on level. There was no way I was going to get up the hill and home.

A call the Lovely Bride who called friends in the Kent Valley, a level shot from where I was currently stranded. They were more than willing to help, and I did bring my own luggage. So I spent a very nice dinner and evening working (I had also brought hard copy to work on), and crashed on the spare bed in one of the offices.

And in the morning, the roads still glistened with now-compacted ice. I made a valiant attempt at omelets (better than I normally do, but still too brown) and made another attempt at the now-mostly-empty hill leading up to Grubb Street. With the direct sun and the passing traffic, it was mostly easy, but once getting on the roads on top of the hill the ice returned.

Now I am home safely. The Lovely Bride is making a fire and the Houseguest is working on her files. And I get to change into some dry socks, which I did NOT pack into the go bag.

Ah well, I learn as I go forward.

More later,

Rolling Stones

I know, it is all very hip and cool to declare that Global Warming is a hoax whenever is snows somewhere (Like back East. In January), but out here in the real world we are looking at large chunks of Mt. Rainier coming down the riverbeds because its glaciers are, you know, melting.

More later,

Update: Cliff Mass has more on why it is so cold back east (and why it has been so warm back here). Now comparing daily weather and glaciers is apples and oranges (they operate on different time scales), but he does offer some (eventual) respite for those in the upper Midwest and Plains.

Fall

The seasons changed while I was comatose. The Puget Sound region reached the end of a glorious summer, tripped over the skateboard concealed in the detritus of big leaf maple leaves and pitched headlong down the stairs into autumn, at the base of which it now lies, twitching occasionally and hoping that some passerby will hear its mewling cries for help.

Most of the northern US classifies fall as being emotionally signaled by the first frost. For us, it is the first fall storms, which wind up through the valleys, bringing hail and thunder and leaving in their wake a chill in the air. We don't get the swath of color, but rather bursts of turning leaves against an evergreen background. The clouds clear and Rainier is wrapped in a mantle of new snow.

And being Seattle, we tend to overreact just a tad. The initial rained turned all eyes to the levees in the Green, while it was the Snohomish that had worse flooding. And every flooded porch and patio is the harbinger of the upcoming floodpocalypse. Always skittery about snow, the populace is now particularly freaked about rain.

Freaked about the rain. In Seattle.

Yeah, its going to be an interesting autumn.

More later,

Having a Heat Wave

As you may have heard from other Seattle blogs, it is hot out here. Surprisingly, untypically, extremely hot. Triple digit territory, which would be cause for remark in other parts of the country.

Here, its a bit weirder than in most parts of the country. We aren't a place that gets this kind of heat often, and as such, we don't do a lot as far as air conditioning. When we moved out here over ten years back, we brought along the room air conditioner from Wisconsin, only to find that it would not fit in any windows in the house (they are sliders, not lifters). So right now we are spending as much time as possible in the lowest floor, and running the fans. The cats are OK so far, but are trying to emulate throw-rugs.

Work is slightly more of a challenge, in that some rooms have adequate HVAC and some don't. We're moving fans around to keep other departments cool.

It is going to be a fun week, and its only going to get hotter. Wish us luck.

More later,

Weather Report

I was going to write about type faces, but instead the current situation drags me back to the current Weathermageddon. After the abnormal and heavy snows of December, we are now hit with abnormal and excessive rain.

Now rain in Seattle, despite our reputation, is usually soft and misty and relatively polite. This is serious midwestern rain - big globby spitballs from on high. And it just does not stop.

However, we, both on Grubb Street and in the greater Seattle area, are doing OK. Once again, the metropolitan area is in the rain shadow of the storm (I've been here ten years, and this year is the first that I've heard of Seattle being in a "rain shadow" (that is, mountains between us and the worst of the storm). Usually that term is used for Port Townsend out on the peninsula.

North, south, and west of us is another matter. The roads over the passes are closed, there was an avalanche at Stevens Pass and another large one at the ski resort up at Snoqualmie. South of here, it looks like I-5 will be closed again as the rivers in the Chehalis/Centralia area need somewhere to go (and most of the flatland has been taken up with new development).

The worst I've seen here is that we've got a leak at the office - not over any machinery, mind you, but still it is an irritant. For the moment, the lowlands around the office are not flooded (touch wood), but the rain continues to fall.

More later,

Not to Make Anyone Nervous ...

... but it is snowing hard up here on Grubb Street.

Today was the Lovely Bride's birthday, and in celebration, we set off for Bahama Breeze, a Carib seafood restaurant down near the Big Mall in Tukwilla. As we left, at five, the large flakes were drifting down, and I had to brush a light dusting off the car. By the time we reached the valley floor, it was rain/snow and melting fast, so we thought no problem.

Fortunately, Kate took a seat facing the dining room, and I was facing a window as the rain/snow turned to just snow and then started to stick. By the time we left the restaurant, about 6:30, we had to brush a LOT of snow off the cars, and the roads were slushy. As we climbed the hill, the slush turned to hard-pack, and I had a lot of white-knuckle moments fighting to keep the car on the road, while watching out for every other driver. Oh, and every time we turned off a larger road for a smaller one, it got worse.

We're home safely, the snow is piling up. Weather.com said this was supposed to be rain, while the Weather Underground predicted snow. Meteorologists were calling for a rain/snow mix, but that was for yesterday. So the short form is ... we got no clue what awaits us at sunrise.

Not that anyone should be nervous, mind you.

More later,

After Action Report

So the snow had melted (for the most part). At work, the slough is almost is over the banks, and several trees have been snapped. At home, the woodpecker continues its assault on the power pole. The garbage has yet to be picked up.

The great Snowpocalypse of Late-Oh-Eight is done with.

And to some degree, I'm going to miss it. The blanket of white, the lack of traffic, the solitude of it all. The fact that I could get out of the driveway with the chains and that, while a hike, the basic amenities were still available. We didn't go hungry, and my Christmas present to my parents got there on Christmas day.

I'm not particularly cheesed about the lack of salt on the road, since my favorite first vehicle (A powder-blue Cutlass Supreme) lost its trunk and wheel wells to the relentless chemical erosion of salted streets in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And the fact that my own job could we worked from home for a couple days worked out well for us as well.

I am less entertained by the failure of other urban services. I can give them the lack of garbage pickup on the week of the heavy snowfall, but after Christmas, when most of the roads are finally passable? The Lovely Bride do not product a humongus amount of trash, but we HAVE been entertaining, and the recycling bin is starting to be a two-person operation.

And I am particularly cheesed about the performance of transit, ranging from buses to planes. A complete collapse of public transportation in the face of this mess is one of the more serious challenges from this storm. Like the taxis out of the airport during that big Thanksgiving blow a few years back, bad weather is the particular period when we NEED mass transit.

(And to that end, proper sanding of the mass transit streets makes it particularly helpful to the car-full among us - we know the bus routes, and can figure that they should be clear as well).

And the airport - the huge numbers stranded shows once more the challenges of the hub airport system. When something goes down, it if reaches the heart of the system, the entire system collapses.

And lastly, the meteorologists. Let's be honest, the timing of these storms were late from the start, causing advanced panicking and letting people's guards down for when the storm finally rolled through. The local weather predictors were about a day off, from the initial dusting of snow (way back on the 13th, which was supposed to be on the 12th), to the post-Christmas warming trend, we were literally a dollar short.

But in general, it has been a survivable malady that struck the Sound for most. I have packages still to arrive and comics have been help up in Oregon for over a week, but in general it has been pretty good. And now we are back to Seattle Winter - grey-skyed and damp.

But then, maybe we'll get snow again. There is always hope.

More later,

A Christmas Feast

Each year, the Lovely Bride and I celebrate the holiday by having friends over for dinner, a feast with brined turkey as its star. This turkey is so good, that even the recent absolutely miserable weather was not sufficient to dissuade them from at least attempting the quest up to ice-clogged Grubb Street, on the east hill near Panther Lake.

One of our number could not make it, her car still snowed in on Queen Anne. A family of three managed to get out of their garage in Kirkland, but the street proved to be too difficult to navigate (And I hope they got the car back into the garage afterward). One guest may or may not have damaged his radiator in the journey. Two guests had to be picked up, their house in an unplowed cul-de-sac at the bottom of a hill. The final couple made it with no problem, as old driving skills honed in Illinois winter came to the fore as they braved the ice floes in front of our house.

The Wet Christmas promised by the forecasters? Bah humbug. It only stopped snowing once the successful members finally arrived.

Even with our reduced numbers, it was a wonderful meal. The turkey (a 21-pound moa brined overnight) was done to perfection, and accompanied by poppyseed rolls, stuffing, gravy, two types of peas, stuffed mushrooms and ramaki (bacon-wrapped scallops and olives) as appetizers, and cheesecake and chocolate cake (with wonderful tea) for desert. Conversation was engaging and ran late into the evening (possibly the result of the wine, but just as likely from the fact that all of us had been dealing with cabin fever over the recent ordeal). Everyone got home safely afterward, which was perfect.

And the promised rain? Still hasn't shown up here - it is still snowing as I write this.

May all of you, and all that are close to you, have a safe and sane holiday season.

More later,

Working At Home

Just because I grumble about how Seattlites are shocked, simply shocked, whenever we get snow, even I am aware of how tough the situation has gotten. The Puget Sound region has had either three or four (depending on how you're counting) "snow events" in the past two weeks, without any warming trends between them. The most recent of these events hit yesterday, and was supposed to be mostly rain in the lowlands. At the moment we have 8-10" up on Grubb Street, and so I am working from home today.

Yes, this would be considered "real snow" to anyone back east, Seattle. You are completely justified to be amazed and/or to complain about it. Go nuts.

Actually, we have it very nice here. Power is still on (touch wood again), we had sufficient supplies laid in (and shopping Sat. AM was filled not with panicking customers but with families preparing for Christmas dinner), and through the miracle of the Internet I can communicate with the home office (which sounds a bit sparse today - one fellow employee made it all the way to the office, only to get stuck five feet from our under-building parking - even if you can make it on the roads, the parking lots are horrible).

And we are much better off than many. A lot of folk don't have the luxury of a snow day or even working at home. The local merchants are struggling both with personnel that might not show up and customers who are aren't coming in. And the airport is a disaster that shames the Thanksgiving storm from a few years back. No one is going out, flights are being canceled, no one has de-icer (yeah, that's a surprise) and families are literally trapped at the airport for days.

So yeah, I'm pretty thankful to be where I am right now.

More later (and maybe something that doesn't involve weather next time),

Solstice

The predicted weather has been severe but not as horrible as predicted (touch wood). The heavy winds kept to the uplands, sparing most of us and leaving the power on despite some local outages. The roads are snow-covered, and we have had about three inches on Grubb Street(and the snow has kicked up again). It is a light, fluffy, dry snow, so it blows about easily and I am not sure about real totals at this point.

We had an overnight guest from the Lovely Bride's RPG group due to the snow, but sent him on his way this morning with minimal fuss. And while there have been traffic tie-ups and frustrations, we've gotten off easier than other places in the recent storm (Portland is requiring chains in the metro district).

I should note that Seattle's weather is extremely localized, and can change dramatically over a course of a mile. Some of the other reporters have been Scarlett and Mystical Forest.

Also, one of the greatest dangers I have encountered on the road so far has not been bad drivers, but snow chains that have come off cars, trucks, and busses. Keep an eye out.

More snow tonight. Everyone stay put, and we'll see how things turn out tomorrow.

More later

(Picture from the P-I).

Waiting for the Big One

So, in reference to our meteorological amnesia, I have had the following conversation three times so far:

OTHER PERSON: This is the worst weather we've ever had.
ME: You remember that Thanksgiving storm two years ago?
OTHER PERSON: Oh, yeah, that was bad.
ME: And the one in January right after that.
OTHER PERSON: Yeah, that one was a bad one, too.

The fact is there in their brains - we have had bad weather here before. But we FORGET. And are rudely interrupted when it snows again. Our temperate nature 90% of the time makes this sort of thing amazing to most people.

And when we have thunder, oh, that's a subject for discussion the next day.

People from the Midwest must think we are well and truly addled out here, to report on snow EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS. A blog out of Wisconsin would read "Snow. Snow again. Yet more Snow. Ice. Thundersnow. More Snow. It's spring again, and Mr. Coleson lost his ice-fishing truck when the lake thawed. Oh, wait a minute, more snow."

On Grubb Steeet, things have not been too bad. The most recent storm laid down most of its damage north of I-90, and Bellevue was a mess, but to the south we just got a light dusting and slick roads. Thursday work was canceled, Friday the place was open but lightly attended between Christmas vacationers and those truly snowed in. There were about five people in our 15-person office pod, one of the founders was running the front desk, and they set out for pizza for lunch. Those who showed were individuals with significant Northern/Eastern Washington roots. And the only reason we managed to show up was that our office is not located on one of Bellevue's many unplowed hills.

So now we have another storm bearing down on us. High winds are predicted in the foothills but haven't descended on us, yet. Snow ranging from trace amounts to thick blankets should arrive later. And it should continue like that through the holidays. The Lovely Bride and I did our holiday dinner shopping today, capped with a 21 pound bird, and we're ready to hunker down for a while.

More later,

Snowpocalypse Delayed

I've said this before, but the big challenge to weather prediction in Seattle is the lack of a large, flat agricultural state to our west. If we had one, we could call it up and ask "What is all y'all's weather like over there?" and they would tell us and that would be the likely forecast.

Anyway, Wednesday morning was supposed to be a massive snowpocalypse (I did not coin this eminently useful word, but my IT department thinks its a hoot). Supposedly we were going to see the nastiness descend on Seattle proper with all manner of dire consequences. Instead, what happened was that the Olympics (see glacial wall photo below) blunted the most of the snow assault, so Oly to the south and Everett to the north got hammered, while the angel of snow passed over Seattle.

Of course, it left nervousness in the office on Wednesday, and most of us kept the weather radar on the computers running while doing other things (which harks back to my days in Wisconsin, where I would leave the TV on without the sound, tuned to the weather channel, for the inevitable line of summer thunderstorms). When a particularly nasty cell of snow moved over Renton, I booked. Got home in the wet but before dark, and nested in.

So, crisis averted? Not quite. The center of the storm moved south, and Seattle came in for its licks THIS morning. They closed the office officially when it was noted that Bellevue was suffering a complete white-out. Up on Grubb Street, it is a half-inch dusting, but with our treacherous little hill, there is no traffic.

So I'm hunkered down, VPNed into the network, office communicator on, checking emails as need be. Sent enough work home to keep me busy through the day. But the weirdness of the weather is like the frustration of the traffic - it is not that it is all that bad, but that it is completely unpredictable.

More later,

The Ice Age Cometh

Despite our best level of meteorological disbelief, the snow has remained on the ground and the temperatures have been surprisingly arctic. While the main roads have cleared up, the street I live on (with its slight rise in front of the house) have remained icebound and treacherous.

The good news is that the views have been wonderful. Coming off the hill yesterday, the Olympics were clad in white and looked like an advancing glacier bearing down on the sound.

Now word comes down of heavy snow, starting early and going through the day. I've loaded up files in the laptop in preparation of working at home tomorrow.

More later,

Snow

I mentioned our very-Seattle affliction of meteorological amnesia in regards to the Sound's High Summer, and now I should revsit it with our regions' first snowfall. It has snowed every year I have been out here on Grubb Street, ranging from light dustings to real snow accumulations that close schools. Yet we forget about this, and with the first real snowfall of the year, we both treat it as Snowpocalypse (TM) or and then forget entirely what we are dealing with once it is on the ground.

The dreaded snow event was supposed to hit Friday night, and everybody panicked at the idea of being caught in rush hour under six inches of snow. Given the accuracy of Seattle weather reports, it put off until late Saturday night, consisted of less than two inches, and the only effect was to curtail my Saturday Night game to three hours as the lawns and parking lots filled up with snow.

However, combined with the pre-snowfall panic, there is the post-snowfall willful ignorance. King County doesn't have same level of salt trucks and plows that other communities have (odd, since we can see the snow year-round on the surrounding mountains). So unless the snow is followed by warming temperatures (it ain't this time), the streets turn to polished glass. We have a very slight incline on the street in front of the house, and it has been enough to defeat all but the pickups on their way up the hill. We hear the spinning wheels and watch the slow slippage backwards in defeat. No one thinks we have a hill here until it snows, and then they are heartily reminded (A few years back the county filled in the ditches by the side of the road and put low-level sidewalks in, which have reduced the number of cars ditching this year).

So we are effectively snowed in for the day, and there are predictions of an additional 1-2" this afternoon (the skies are blue at the moment). So its a day of working at home, cleaning, and Internet shopping. It might be irritating, but it is just so PRETTY outside right now.

More later,

Hard Rain

Hmm, the sun is finally coming out.

It has been a rainy two weeks in the Puget Sound region. About seven inches up on Grubb Street (did I mention I have a rain gauge on my back porch?). The rivers are high, but primarily north and south of the Seattle area proper. We had a small dam go but so far have avoided the major flooding of last year (touch wood).

But the rain itself has been definitely non-Novemberish. As we move into winter, we look at gentle, evening rains, usually with a good solid windstorm late in the month (the Lovely Bride uses this event to gather downed pine branches for the Christmas wreath). The rains of the November have been hard, almost eastern rains, heavy drops that command the use of an umbrella (or at least a hat or hoodie). Most Seattle rains are mists which are casually ignored by the nataives.

And now we're watching as the creeks rise and the levees are reinforced in counties north and south of here. Weather news dominates the local broadcasts. It will pass, and things will get back to (mostly) normal.

More later,