More songs about gale force winds
Dec. 15th, 2006 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersSo the winter storms here have been getting worse and worse. Yesterday the worst yet was forecast, with winds expected to reach 40 mph with gusts up to 60 mph. It began raining heavily around 3:30pm, and I began to dread the walk home. Wind-driven rain would mean a thorough soaking. Maybe I'd take the bus instead. Then I got e-mail from Denys asking if I wanted a ride home. He'd gone home early to avoid football traffic downtown, and he'd gotten soaked just walking from the busstop to the house. I happily accepted his offer.
It took us a half hour to get from my workplace back to the house. We first tried the low road -- Pacific Ave -- and fought our way through a traffic jam until we hit a huge lake of water in the road under University Bridge with a car stalled in the middle of it. Then we circled around through more heavy traffic and tried Campus Parkway. Once again, we found a lake of water under the University Bridge, but cars were making it through, although god knows how, since the water seemed to climb to the windows at the deepest spot. As we approached the water, a girl on a scooter drove up on the sidewalk next to us. The sidewalk was under water too.
I rolled down my window and asked her, "Are you going to try it?"
"I'm going to try it on the sidewalk," she said.
"Go ahead," I said. "We'll wait until you get through." We didn't want to swamp her with our wake.
She made it through just fine. Then Denys went, and the water came flowing up over the hood of the car. We plowed on through, as I thought of the stalled car we'd seen in the road lake below. As we continued down to the horrible five-way intersection beyond the bridge, we found two cars stalled there, probably in a delayed reaction to submerging the engine previously.
After that, the driving was easy, and we got home just fine. Now all we had to worry about was whether our power would stay on through the night. As I went to bed, the wind was howling something fierce, and I hoped the gum tree out back wouldn't fall over into the alley it leans over. When I woke up this morning, having slept deeply and peacefully all night, we still had power, and everything was calm. Maybe it hadn't been as bad as all that. But the radio announced that half the city was without power, school districts were closed in Seattle and Tacoma, three people had died (two drivers crushed by trees, one woman drowned in her basement), and trees were down everywhere. The story even merited a mention in the national news.
Some junk we have in the back yard had blown around, and I cleared it up. Didn't see much evidence of damage as I walked to work, although one fence had blown over and there were lots of fallen branches and at least one downed tree. The University District seemed to be doing business as usual, and the barista at the Allegro was pretty blase about it all, although she'd stayed with a friend locally rather than try to get to her home in Ballard during the storm. Smart move, that.
Many of my co-workers were without power when they left their houses this morning. Seems we had it lucky in Fremont!
It took us a half hour to get from my workplace back to the house. We first tried the low road -- Pacific Ave -- and fought our way through a traffic jam until we hit a huge lake of water in the road under University Bridge with a car stalled in the middle of it. Then we circled around through more heavy traffic and tried Campus Parkway. Once again, we found a lake of water under the University Bridge, but cars were making it through, although god knows how, since the water seemed to climb to the windows at the deepest spot. As we approached the water, a girl on a scooter drove up on the sidewalk next to us. The sidewalk was under water too.
I rolled down my window and asked her, "Are you going to try it?"
"I'm going to try it on the sidewalk," she said.
"Go ahead," I said. "We'll wait until you get through." We didn't want to swamp her with our wake.
She made it through just fine. Then Denys went, and the water came flowing up over the hood of the car. We plowed on through, as I thought of the stalled car we'd seen in the road lake below. As we continued down to the horrible five-way intersection beyond the bridge, we found two cars stalled there, probably in a delayed reaction to submerging the engine previously.
After that, the driving was easy, and we got home just fine. Now all we had to worry about was whether our power would stay on through the night. As I went to bed, the wind was howling something fierce, and I hoped the gum tree out back wouldn't fall over into the alley it leans over. When I woke up this morning, having slept deeply and peacefully all night, we still had power, and everything was calm. Maybe it hadn't been as bad as all that. But the radio announced that half the city was without power, school districts were closed in Seattle and Tacoma, three people had died (two drivers crushed by trees, one woman drowned in her basement), and trees were down everywhere. The story even merited a mention in the national news.
Some junk we have in the back yard had blown around, and I cleared it up. Didn't see much evidence of damage as I walked to work, although one fence had blown over and there were lots of fallen branches and at least one downed tree. The University District seemed to be doing business as usual, and the barista at the Allegro was pretty blase about it all, although she'd stayed with a friend locally rather than try to get to her home in Ballard during the storm. Smart move, that.
Many of my co-workers were without power when they left their houses this morning. Seems we had it lucky in Fremont!
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 08:54 pm (UTC)One of the other oddities of the day is that I have one of the few copies of today's Seattle Times that they were able to print before the power went out at their print plant in Bothell. According to their web page they printed 13,000 copies. Maybe I should put my copy up on eBay!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-16 04:03 am (UTC)worldcountry!no subject
Date: 2006-12-16 06:33 am (UTC)