Windpocalypse 2006: The Aftermath
I’m kinda shocked. I still have power. Unfortunately, it looks like most of the rest of the team doesn’t, as do most of you — City Light is currently reporting 160,000 customers without power, roughly half the city. Puget Sound Energy reports 700,000.
The 520 bridge remains closed (meaning its drawspan is open, so it’s closed because it’s open). It’s going to be a mess coming in to work this morning. If you work downtown, sorry, the city center never lost juice. UW, of course, never closes. Oh, and expect a lot of four way stops in intersections. Stop lights are out all over the place. Metro routes are scrambled as well due to down trees and the 520 bridge. If you need an excuse to stay home, well, Seattle Schools are closed due to the widespread outages. Right now, WSDOT is reporting no traffic… because the almost the entire traffic reporting grid is down.
And this is on top of that weird rush hour flooding last night. Mudslides all over. Low lying areas and basements have water in them. The scariest story was the woman who drowned in her own basement.
They (at the They Center For Comparing Things) say this is the worst storm since the Inauguration Day 1993 storm.
All you who were going on about how dumb we were about driving in snow, welcome to what a real Seattle storm looks and feels like. Kinda feels… dark and powerless, doesn’t it?
Stay safe, everyone. Really.
UPDATE: Jeff Renner on KING5 reported that Sea-Tac recorded an unofficial 69mph gust last night. If this is true, it’s the highest ever recorded at the airport, ahead of either the Inauguration Day storm or the infamous Columbus Day Storm in 1962. Of course, being ahead of the Columbus Day Storm is a little dubious, considering that Sea-Tac recorded only an 58mph gust while a location in Renton recorded a 100mph gust that night nearly 50 years ago. Still, this was an epic-making storm last night, made even odder by not actually being on a holiday as most Seattle epic-making events are (c.f. Columbus Day Storm, Ash Wednesday Earthquake).
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That poor lady. What a terrible way to die.