Last month was the snowstorm. This month brings a windstorm. And we're not even into the wintery portion of the winter season. What gives?
Seattle weathered the storm in various ways, largely dependent on location. Downed trees and power outages were the primary problems, as were flooding and mudslides. Seattle City Light reported 170,000 without power this morning. And, there were places that felt the effects of too much water falling too quickly. The Seattle Times and PI newspapers couldn't print their dailies because of power outages at the presses. The online editions didn't suffer, however. As for us, the central city was fine this morning, as far as I could tell - no power outages, no flooding.
Redmond and Bellevue were another matter. All of the intersections I went through while driving around this morning were without power, which means no functioning traffic lights. Lots of old trees, fences, signs, and the like were uprooted and toppled. Someone calling into KUOW reported the biggest traffic backups in Bellevue to be because of people lining up for gasoline (2hr waits) or Burger King.
Island County and the Skagit Valley are apparently doing worse than King County. The same situation there: power outages, downed trees, and the like. The problem there is that there's more damage, and people are more spread out, which means it's harder to get power and services back up to a lot of people quickly.
It's been an interesting November and December, from the weather standpoint. Who knows what the new year will bring?
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