Weathering Seattle Part 2 of 2: Wind decides to throw a tantrum at the Pacific Northwest
In case you haven’t heard, a little storm hit the Pacific Northwest and Seattle last Thursday night. It brought rain, hurricane-force winds of over 70mph, and hundreds of fallen trees and downed power lines. Enough to leave over a million people without power on Friday.
On Thursday night the power flickered off/on several times until it finally died around 10pm. I knocked out early and woke up in the morning to find the power wasn’t back yet. I had no idea the extent of the damage around the area, and since the power at my place has gone out during almost every remotely hard storm we’ve seen, I had no reason to assume that it would be as bad as it was.
I headed to work on Friday morning. No, strike that, I tried to go to work. I spent about 45 minutes dodging a bunch of nut-jobs darting across intersections with dead traffic lights. These imbeciles will gladly flash a piece of plastic at you as proof that they know how to drive. When it comes down to it though, they prove their mental capacity mimics that of a banana slug. Do you really think that trying to just force your way into the middle of the intersection with your giant SUV is speeding up anyone’s, including your, commute? If people would take turns sending one car from each lane in each direction in a counter-clockwise or clockwise fashion, things would move quickly and smoothly. Instead what happened was a cluster that backed cars up for as far as the eye could see. Getting back home was no easy task either; trying to dodge backed up lines of cars as well as the numerous blocked roads and downed trees allowed me to find a new roundabout route from work to home.
Needless to say, at this point the magnitude of the disaster was becoming clear to me. There was no power at work which meant there was no work. I spent most of the day Friday doing a bunch of stuff around the house that needed to be done anyway and didn’t require electricity. I tried to run some errands, but the power was out everywhere, even in Redmond. Trying to leave Bellevue headed south, to where there was power, was an exercise in patience I was not up for.
Later that night Matt and I did make it out to Renton to find the area jam-packed with more people than have probably ever been in the area. Every fast food place, gas station, and grocery store had lines spilling out of it. After recharging ourselves and my car we headed home to find that Matt had power but I did not. I braved the cold in my apartment for one more night but when I woke up Saturday morning freezing in my own bed, I knew I had to get out of there. I grabbed my things and headed over to Matt’s place Saturday morning; and I’m still there as I write this post.
Its certainly been an interesting weekend. You may be wondering why I labeled this post part 2 of 2. Well, there is another crazy Seattle disaster story I’ve been meaning to retell here which I haven’t gotten around to yet. I will try to do that soon though. It involved me, a plane, and a lot of white stuff.