Look out Seattle!

I live on the west side of Ballard. This is my front yard.

Hail storm 2007

Ten minutes ago, we had hail, thunder, lightning, wind strong enough to thow my then unlocked front door wide open, and rain.

Hail storm 2007

photo by
by joshc [flickr].

all along Olive Way businesses are closed early thanks to power outages. On Broadway, lights are out from Harrison to Denny.

Remember that windstorm we had in December? (For those of you who just got here, see [mb] and [mb] for details.)

Never mind the dead storm victims, the frustration of waiting for the powers that be to rebuild half the power grid, and the millions and millions of dollars in cleanup costs. Our local papers have been obsessing over another key question: What do we call the thing? (And, well, we’re not immune either: [mb], [mb].)

It wasn’t just us: the National Weather Service held a ‘name that storm’ contest. They had over 6000 entries. The newspapers like the guy who tried to name the storm after his ex-wife, but I think my personal favorite submission was “When The Evergreens Got Mad.”

Well, local media people can relax: the National Weather Service has officially awarded the storm a name. It will now be known as the Hanukkah Eve storm. [Seattle Times]

The folks behind the decision explained that it seemed only appropriate: there was a lot of candle-lighting involved.

Mazel tov. How’s the repair work coming along?

photo by Eldan Goldenberg [flickr] via the metroblogging group pool

• a shockingly compelling defense of Gregoire’s decision to pit viaduct vs. tunnel [horsesass]
• rent a video, help a scarecrow employee recover from windpocalypse [dailyweekly]
• changing the world? perhaps you’d like to ‘blog about it?¹ [worldchanging]
• investigate the interestingness of a would-be neighborhood without leaving the house [robotcoop]

Read more

I’ll bet you assumed that your morning newspaper was blown away by the howling winds and lodged permanently in the upper reaches of your neighbor’s tree. Alas, it seems that last night’s storm knocked out both the Seattle Times and P-I’s ability to publish a print edition. If you have electricity and are desperate for your newspaper fix, go to the internet, print the online version on the dirtiest paper you can find, and page through it at your leisure. [lostremote]

ED: Does anyone actually still take the print edition, anyway?

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).

Since everyone is reporting on their own microclimate during windpocalypse 2006: I managed to walk from downtown to Capitol Hill without getting wet. Dry, but windblown. With that out of the way, here’s tonight’s IOB:

• Not sure what the “Uptight Seattleite” would think, but the Weekly has the headline of the week: Boner Patrol Won’t Soften Up [dailyweekly]
• Don’t blame the Jews, it’s Christians who are waging the war on Christmas [horsesass]
• saving the world, one quarter of the country at a time. gas consumption is flatlining in the northwest [dailyscore]
• Seth responds to my challenge [mb] to respond to Westneat’s ridiculous question. He’ll have to claim the prize at the next meet-up. [seattlest]
• I thought that if anything could take down the 800 pound gorilla that is the Slog in Capitol Hill Seattle’s tourney of their corner of Capitol Hill, it would be the infinite inventory of the Everything Store. Apparently their bizarre collection of useful crap isn’t enough. [chs]

OK, people. We can’t deal with snow, yeah. But now comes the signature weather event of Seattle: Wind. And it looks nasty tonight.

Tonight: Rain turning to showers overnight. Becoming very windy. Lows in the upper 30s and 40s. Southerly wind rising to 40 mph with gusts to 65 mph around midnight.

So, if you have anything that could go airborne in a storm like this (chairs, garden gnomes, pets), tie ‘em down.

And if you’re planning on waiting until after the Seahawks game to do any cross-lake driving, well…

If the high winds hit as expected, crews will close the SR 520 Evergreen Point Bridge late tonight. High winds also are likely to close the SR 104 Hood Canal Bridge to motor vehicle traffic and possibly disrupt ferry schedules.

WSDOT’s goal is to get all of the Seattle Seahawks traffic across the SR 520 bridge by 11 p.m. and then begin the closure. The bridge would remain closed to traffic until the storm passes Friday morning.

The high wind warning is currently scheduled to expire at 10am. That means the bridges may not open for rush hour tomorrow morning. Traffic tomorrow? Nightmare.

Oh, and just expect the power to be out. Hope you have your flashlight.

OK? Now get out there and enjoy Jim Foreman’s toupee blowing off in the gale-force winds! At least until the power goes out.