Pacific Northwest Snow/Ice Storm

Seems early in the season for such a storm. Susan, Rebwa, et.al. -- I hope you all are A-OK.

I wonder how many drivers were wishing they had some food, drink, tp, boots and warm blankets, etc. in their vehicles. Sounds like portions of I-5 south of Seattle were extremely treacherous.

Best wishes, all.


http://www.king5.com/news/local/Northwest-in-deep-freeze-after-storm-blows-through-110171779.html

"Roads remain icy and treacherous throughout the area, and abandoned cars dot the highways and side streets. The Washington State Patrol has launched a Cessna aircraft equipped with a Forward Looking Infra-Red camera to search for occupied disabled vehicles in King, Pierce and Thurston Counties.

Have had a couple of experiences where it took several hours to get home after DC storms. No fun. In one instance (my youthful unprepared days), my bus jackknifed and passengers were forced to walk. I was wearing flats and hose.

Was contemplating curling up in a snow drift and dying when a woman pulled her car over to give me a lift home.

I never again trusted a forecast that called for a mere dusting of snow. We had 15" in that storm -- which had started in the morning as light flurries and was not expected to progress beyond that.

More news from Washington state -- eastern Washington is slated to be hit with a "rare" blizzard. Again, regards to the ETS community out there!

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2010/11/23/1735670/as-deadly-snow-storm-hits-seattle.html

"Some commuters gave up after more than four hours and returned to their Seattle offices; others reported they were still stuck in traffic more than five hours after leaving work".


http://www.ktvb.com/news/Blizzard-condit...-110162584.html

"SPOKANE -- A blizzard warning throughout much of the Inland Northwest is having a huge impact on roads."

Multiple closures on I-5 in Southern OR as well this morning. The Portland area is ok, it's just cold.

All okay here, I stayed home and watched it on TV. Got lucky and the power stayed on. Making numerous trips to the barn to keep horse's water buckets from freezing. It was near blizzard conditions here in the early evening with the snow and wind.

I hate to minimize but it hasn't been much of a storm here in Bellevue, WA - late afternoon snow, cold, and continued cold today meant it didn't start to melt right off. I left work by 2pm yesterday and avoided any semblance of a death march to get home. There's about 2 inches on the ground here, and roads are well iced, although transportation departments have focussed on keeping major arterials clear, and necessary traffic is moving pretty well. There's more snow closer to the Cascades, and some of the counties along the Straits and beaches got socked. I stayed home this morning, using email and conference calls to get my work done. Went for a walk with my wife in cold bright sunshine, now just sitting at home, reading some websites, and eyeing the liquor cabinet - except I'm on call for Red Cross, so I guess that's a casualty of the storm. Kitsap County to the west across Puget Sound got the worst of things, high cold winds and power outages. But nothing we can't all recover from in a few days, and the forecast is for warming rain by mid-day thursday.

It was mainly good for its nuisance value. The most snow in the flatlands was probably here, about 4". The bad thing was the timing, hitting just before the evening commute in the most populated and car-congested region of WA, with wet roads and then 22F temps and wind (windchill down to 0F) blowing snow sideways. Poor visibility and slip & slide. It didn't help that Seattle has seven or eight hills, either.

I was sent south from here to pick up a crew in Longview, and while the ice on the road was just enough to be treacherous, it wasn't really anything that reducing your speed wouldn't handle. There were some spinouts slowing crawling out of the ditch (one fool had turned off all his lights on a black pickup).

The cold is annoying, esp the part where it rained before the temps dropped. I still can't get my car door open.

Cold again tonight and tomorrow, then it's supposed to warm up into the balmy 40s (days).

They say it's a sign of the winter to come. Brrrrrrrr!

Sue

I really like this kind of info - here's Puget Sound Energy's Service Alert website, http://sam.pse.com/. It tracks reported power outages in near real-time, searchable by zip code and county. Look at Kitsap County and you'll see where yesterday's storm hit the hardest. To someone who plans emergency shelters this is gold, and until recently this kind of info was only available from the right guy in an EOC somewhere. I'd really like to see this info reported more by actual addresses or power territories, or take this info and overlay some other stuff on it - access routes, floodwater boundaries, etc - but this comes in handy as it is, and given the pace of change I reckon there's someone out there somewhere already working on the overlay. Ain't technology lovely...

Wild weather is always a bit of a shocker.

In the coastal areas, the humidity means that the cold cuts a little deeper and the show is a heckuva lot heavier.

Inland, on the prairies, we just had an early, surprise blast of our own. Our official temp last night was -32 C. That does not include windchill. Similar forecast tonight.

Bloody 'ell!