[Leica] NW weather (Seattle Area)

[rsphotoimages at comcast.net (Bob Shaw)]

I live in the Renton Highlands, about 12 miles SE of Metro Seattle.  
Sort of a rural/suburban/Boeing-Kenworth Blue Collar nowhere in 
particular suddenly sprouting half-million-dollar homes sort of place.  
(phew!!!...)

It's late Saturday afternoon and I just returned from a trip into 
Seattle, where many urban neighborhood are dark, traffic light are off 
and cafes, retail and gas stations are still waiting for power.  This 
all deep in the city.

I took a favorite, non-freeway route along Lake Washington and found a 
"Detour" sign on Seward Park Way, a heavily traveled route.  I edged 
through the traffic cones in my Prius and saw the cause:  a 
second-growth Douglas Fir, maybe 150+ feet high and at least 4 feet 
wide at the base had blown over on what appeared to be a 230kv primary 
feed line.  There were  3 and 5 lb chunks (I picked up a couple) of 
porcelain insulators laying in sidewalks and front yards more than 100 
yards from the tree.

This wasn't one of those sorry cases of a suburban development where 
roots had been scraped away; it was in the manicured front yard of a 
very nice "Old Seattle" home across the street from an exclusive, lake 
front retirement center.

But with sustained 45-knot plus winds for several hours and 60 mph 
gusts, stuff happens.  Our next door neighbor's skylight lifted off at 
about 0130 and crashed to the street, too.

So many thousands of urban dwellers are included in the million-plus 
Western Washington folks out of juice for now.

Strangely, the power company decided to take down some tall trees 
around our area substation a couple of weeks ago.

Result?  We never really lost power for more than a few minutes.  
Needless to say, we've had friends and family overnight last couple of 
days and probably into Monday or so.  We're grateful.

Bob in Seattle (and Vicinity)


On Dec 16, 2006, at 13:10, Peter Klein wrote:

Ted, glad you're OK.

We're all right, as is our house.  Our neighbors across the street 
didn't fare as well.  A big evergreen tree in their front yard had its 
trunk snapped like a matchstick.  It fell across their driveway, 
crushing their car and damaging a next-door neighbors' car as well.  At 
least it was only cars, not people or their homes.

Before the wind, Seattle got an inch of rain in one hour.  One poor 
woman drowned in her basement laundry room.  There were cars floating 
at a low point on Mercer St. just a few blocks from where I work.  And 
the streets were jammed, not with people trying to get home, but with 
people trying to get to a major football game--which was played, 
despite minor ponds on the field and waterfalls cascading down the 
steps of the stands!  Fortunately the game was over before the really 
big winds hit.

We were without power for 24 hours, got it back yesterday evening for a 
while, lost it again for an hour, and then it came back on for good 
after a couple of quick blackouts.  Some of the outlying areas may be 
without power for several days.

Jerry:  Most of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest comes from 
hydroelectric generators on dams.  The electric power company in 
southern British Columbia is called "B.C. Hydro."  Hence, when Ted says 
"hydro," he's talking about electricity, not water.

How's the rest of the Northwest LUG?  Everybody OK?

--Peter

At 06:19 AM 12/16/2006 -0800, you wrote:
> It was pretty wild around here during the night with trees coming down 
> in
> many parts of Victoria and no hydro connections for several hundred
> thousands of homes and offices.
>
> In my home we were without power from sometime around 3 a.m until 
> around
> noon today (Friday) But other than that we did fairly well. I don't 
> feel bad
> about the electricity as this is the 3rd major wind storm this week 
> and we
> only lost power the once. Where many others on Vancouver Island have 
> been
> with out hydro for over a week due to one storm right after another. 
> The
> hydro guys get lines fixed and it storms and they have to fix it all 
> over
> again.
>
> Bad month for weather so far.
> Thank you for asking.
> ted


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