Posting this morning note from a hotel in downtown Seattle after the power on the East side of Seattle (including in our home) has been out since Thursday night. Bellevue, Redmond (yup, Microsoft was out of power,) Woodinville, Kirkland, Issaquah – everything was shut down, one of the two bridges to get us to downtown Seattle was shut down because of wind damage and half of the roads to get us to the highway were blocked by fallen trees, and there were a lot more trees leaning on wires. it wasn’t like we could drive five or ten minutes and find a restaurant, movie theater, grovery story – there was nothing for as far as we could see. Also, we were almost out of gas and there were no gas stations open except over the one working bridge, which was jammed with traffic. A little harrowing. When we got to the hotel, we flipped on the television and internet to find out what was going on. Power after the worst of the storm was out to 1.5 million people. The problem with wind storms here is there are so many trees – with none too strong roots – three people were killed by falling trees on cars and homes, and a woman was drowned from flood waters during the storm. Some of Boeing’s planes were shown stacked on top of each other. Sirens we had heard on the East side and downtown. And, of course, floating drawbridges which are creaky with age don’t do so well in 50-60 mile per hour winds and waves. We still don’t know if our power is back on, but the hotel (actually, all the downtown hotels) are booked up tonight, so we’re going back. At least when we got here yesterday afternoon we were able to take a hot shower, walk around outside in the little bit of sunshine we got, and we found a wonderful smelling bakery where we hung around drinking hot tea and coffee. Anyway, it reminded me of the hurricane we experienced when we lives in Virginia, the baromoter dropping to 20, those big swirls on the radar, the power going out and sleeping, under extra blankets, listening to things bang against our house and the wind howl. Worrying about our older neighbors in the cold (it was supposed to snow/ice last night) and trying to figure out how fast we had to throw out food.
Note to self: keep emergency gasoline can in garage.