The Frustrations of the Greater Seattle Area Weather
The city of Seattle is located in the Pacific Northwest between the Cascade and Olympic Mountains and just off of Puget Sound. Seattle generally has a wet climate and averages thirty-seven inches of rainfall a year. Receiving the heaviest of rainfall in the fall, spring, and winter, the summer is the driest of seasons. With Seattle’s hilly terrain’s convergence zones, living in the Greater Seattle Area is very frustrating because the climate is unpredictable (“Seattle 101”).
It was a typical Seattle Fall morning without rain. At a quarter after eight o’clock a.m., the sky was blanketed with low-laying gray clouds and I was driving to work. It was a normal weekday morning drive that lasted thirty minutes. There was a little bit of traffic, yet the drive was peaceful. About ten minutes to nine o’clock a.m., I pulled into the parking lot of Burgermaster, the 1950’s styled fast food restaurant I worked at. I turned off the ignition, opened my car door, stepped out of the vehicle shutting the door behind me, and walked into work.
As the hours ticked by at work, the worse the weather grew. First, a light sprinkle of rain was apparent and over an hour or two it turned into a sudden down-pour which resulted in [a half] inch of rain for the day (Alexander, Brian). Huge rain drops with the diameter of a dime hit the ground one after another consecutively, hundreds at a time, resulting in a “plop” sound. The longer this down-pour of rain lasted, wind gusts grew more violent eventually blowing branches out of trees and throwing them across the parking lot of Burgermaster. Thwap! Branches swung into the sides of cars slashing the paint. The worst of the weather was yet to come.
As five o’clock p.m. neared, my shift was coming to an end. I punched out of work and walked across the gusty parking lot to my car. I took a right-hand turn out of the parking lot just to come to a sudden halt. Cars would creep forward one car length at a time every eight minutes or so. With the storm occurring during rush-hour, traffic was a nightmare. The storm had “turned the evening commute into something that could [have been] called Survivor: Seattle” (Alexander, Brian). Eventually I made it to the intersection, which was about three-hundred feet from the Burgermaster parking lot, just to find out the intersection was flooded. As I sat in traffic waiting with my windshield wipers on full speed, I watched the headlights of the cars passing through the intersection dip below the waterline. Sitting in my car, I was surrounded by traffic, except to the right-hand side. No turnouts were available. There was no turning around. I was forced to cross through the flooded intersection, it was now my turn. I chose the path which I believed was the shallowest and hoped for the best. As I kept the speedometer pinned at a constant speed, the tires swashed the water along side my car doors. I soon made it out without stalling my car and away I drove.
I could not have been driving for more than ten minutes just to come to another stop in traffic, and it was not at a stop light or stop sign. This time traffic came to a stop due to a river of water pouring off a hillside in the city of Kirkland and into Lake Washington. Here, people were out of their vehicles in the miserable down-pour trying to unclog storm drains. Again, traffic would creep forward several feet at a time as each car passed through this river flowing through city streets. I eventually made it into downtown Kirkland just to find out the high-speed winds knocked out the city’s electricity. Traffic was again backed up several cars. As I waited for my turn to pass through the intersection, one car would pass through at a time. I eventually made it to the intersection and took a right-hand turn onto a side street to gain ahead in traffic. I came to another stop light and again had to wait my turn to advance through. This time my wait in traffic was much shorter than the previous times. Eventually I passed through the intersection and away from the city I drove. After passing through the intersection, the flow of traffic was much smoother, but much slower paced than the speed limit. I would estimate traffic was flowing at a speed close to twenty-five miles per hour. The farther away I drove from Kirkland and into the city of Redmond the faster traffic would flow. Nearly three hours have passed since the time I clocked off of work and I was still a twenty minute drive away from home. Due to the wind storm and the constant pouring of rain, this twenty minute drive lasted about ten to fifteen minutes longer than average. I finally arrived home at a couple minutes passed eight-thirty p.m.
As the wind was howling and the rain was pouring, I climbed out of my car and walked into my house. I cooked something small for dinner, sat down on the sofa, and watched the last quarter of the Seattle Seahawk’s football game. As I was relaxing, I could hear the wind whistling through the cedar trees. Snap! A tree branch broke. As the hours passed, the wind gusts grew stronger. I peeked through the blinds into the backyard to watch the massive two-hundred foot cedar trees sway in the wind.
Midnight was nearing. The gusts of wind were stronger than ever. Cedar trees were crashing to the ground, which attributed to fourteen deaths (Lacitis, Eric and Susan Gilmore). I have not seen a wind storm this powerful since the Inaugural Day Storm in 1993 which also occurred in the Seattle area. In the middle of this mess, I went to bed.
I woke up the following morning, rolled out of bed, and flipped on the light switch. The bedroom light did not come on. I glanced over at my alarm clock, it was off. This was the moment I knew the storm had knocked the electricity out.
As I walked up stairs, I peeked through the window next to the front door. A large ball of tree roots, fifteen feet across, was visible. Back to my room I went. I slipped on a pair of my shoes and walked outside to see the damage the windstorm caused. Large cedar tree branches were scattered throughout the front yard looking like scattered garbage when an animal ram-sacks a garbage can. I neared the top of our drive way which intersects a gravel road going to the main street. As I peered down the gravel road, two more up rooted trees could not have gone unseen. Back inside my house I went. I received a phone call on my cell phone from Mohammad, a supervisor from Burgermaster, saying in a thick Iranian accent, “don’t come to work, our power is out.” Just after the phone call from Mohammad, chainsaws were roaring in the distance. Neighbors were sawing up the fallen down trees. The storm was a disaster.
Days raced by. There was still no sign of electricity. There was no heating in my home except for a wood stove. With our water being pumped from a well, the water from the faucets was not accessible. In order to take a shower I had to drive five minutes to my friend’s house. His house is connected to city water, therefore it does not require a pump to pump it from the ground like my house. His family also uses propane to heat their home. It was very frustrating not being able to take a shower in my own home.
As I drove around the next few days, driving to the store and to friends’ houses, power crews were frantically repairing the power lines for the one and a half million households whose electricity had gone out (Cornwall, Warren and Christopher Schwarzen). Because of this, Governor Christine Gregoire, announced a state of emergency which brought power crews as far away as Texas to help repair the battered region (“Governor Gregoire”). While the streets were crowded with convoys of power trucks, power was slowly being restored. Some residents, such as my family, were completely out of electricity for as long as seven straight days. It was a disaster. No one should have to go without running water and electricity for that long.
In all, this storm proved to be disastrous and very frustrating for residents of the Greater Seattle area. With the consistent, painstaking labor of the power crews, full power was finally restored to the region. With Seattle’s location and its convergence zones, the climate is unpredictable. If it was not for the city’s geographical location, disasters such as this would not occur.
It was a typical Seattle Fall morning without rain. At a quarter after eight o’clock a.m., the sky was blanketed with low-laying gray clouds and I was driving to work. It was a normal weekday morning drive that lasted thirty minutes. There was a little bit of traffic, yet the drive was peaceful. About ten minutes to nine o’clock a.m., I pulled into the parking lot of Burgermaster, the 1950’s styled fast food restaurant I worked at. I turned off the ignition, opened my car door, stepped out of the vehicle shutting the door behind me, and walked into work.
As the hours ticked by at work, the worse the weather grew. First, a light sprinkle of rain was apparent and over an hour or two it turned into a sudden down-pour which resulted in [a half] inch of rain for the day (Alexander, Brian). Huge rain drops with the diameter of a dime hit the ground one after another consecutively, hundreds at a time, resulting in a “plop” sound. The longer this down-pour of rain lasted, wind gusts grew more violent eventually blowing branches out of trees and throwing them across the parking lot of Burgermaster. Thwap! Branches swung into the sides of cars slashing the paint. The worst of the weather was yet to come.
As five o’clock p.m. neared, my shift was coming to an end. I punched out of work and walked across the gusty parking lot to my car. I took a right-hand turn out of the parking lot just to come to a sudden halt. Cars would creep forward one car length at a time every eight minutes or so. With the storm occurring during rush-hour, traffic was a nightmare. The storm had “turned the evening commute into something that could [have been] called Survivor: Seattle” (Alexander, Brian). Eventually I made it to the intersection, which was about three-hundred feet from the Burgermaster parking lot, just to find out the intersection was flooded. As I sat in traffic waiting with my windshield wipers on full speed, I watched the headlights of the cars passing through the intersection dip below the waterline. Sitting in my car, I was surrounded by traffic, except to the right-hand side. No turnouts were available. There was no turning around. I was forced to cross through the flooded intersection, it was now my turn. I chose the path which I believed was the shallowest and hoped for the best. As I kept the speedometer pinned at a constant speed, the tires swashed the water along side my car doors. I soon made it out without stalling my car and away I drove.
I could not have been driving for more than ten minutes just to come to another stop in traffic, and it was not at a stop light or stop sign. This time traffic came to a stop due to a river of water pouring off a hillside in the city of Kirkland and into Lake Washington. Here, people were out of their vehicles in the miserable down-pour trying to unclog storm drains. Again, traffic would creep forward several feet at a time as each car passed through this river flowing through city streets. I eventually made it into downtown Kirkland just to find out the high-speed winds knocked out the city’s electricity. Traffic was again backed up several cars. As I waited for my turn to pass through the intersection, one car would pass through at a time. I eventually made it to the intersection and took a right-hand turn onto a side street to gain ahead in traffic. I came to another stop light and again had to wait my turn to advance through. This time my wait in traffic was much shorter than the previous times. Eventually I passed through the intersection and away from the city I drove. After passing through the intersection, the flow of traffic was much smoother, but much slower paced than the speed limit. I would estimate traffic was flowing at a speed close to twenty-five miles per hour. The farther away I drove from Kirkland and into the city of Redmond the faster traffic would flow. Nearly three hours have passed since the time I clocked off of work and I was still a twenty minute drive away from home. Due to the wind storm and the constant pouring of rain, this twenty minute drive lasted about ten to fifteen minutes longer than average. I finally arrived home at a couple minutes passed eight-thirty p.m.
As the wind was howling and the rain was pouring, I climbed out of my car and walked into my house. I cooked something small for dinner, sat down on the sofa, and watched the last quarter of the Seattle Seahawk’s football game. As I was relaxing, I could hear the wind whistling through the cedar trees. Snap! A tree branch broke. As the hours passed, the wind gusts grew stronger. I peeked through the blinds into the backyard to watch the massive two-hundred foot cedar trees sway in the wind.
Midnight was nearing. The gusts of wind were stronger than ever. Cedar trees were crashing to the ground, which attributed to fourteen deaths (Lacitis, Eric and Susan Gilmore). I have not seen a wind storm this powerful since the Inaugural Day Storm in 1993 which also occurred in the Seattle area. In the middle of this mess, I went to bed.
I woke up the following morning, rolled out of bed, and flipped on the light switch. The bedroom light did not come on. I glanced over at my alarm clock, it was off. This was the moment I knew the storm had knocked the electricity out.
As I walked up stairs, I peeked through the window next to the front door. A large ball of tree roots, fifteen feet across, was visible. Back to my room I went. I slipped on a pair of my shoes and walked outside to see the damage the windstorm caused. Large cedar tree branches were scattered throughout the front yard looking like scattered garbage when an animal ram-sacks a garbage can. I neared the top of our drive way which intersects a gravel road going to the main street. As I peered down the gravel road, two more up rooted trees could not have gone unseen. Back inside my house I went. I received a phone call on my cell phone from Mohammad, a supervisor from Burgermaster, saying in a thick Iranian accent, “don’t come to work, our power is out.” Just after the phone call from Mohammad, chainsaws were roaring in the distance. Neighbors were sawing up the fallen down trees. The storm was a disaster.
Days raced by. There was still no sign of electricity. There was no heating in my home except for a wood stove. With our water being pumped from a well, the water from the faucets was not accessible. In order to take a shower I had to drive five minutes to my friend’s house. His house is connected to city water, therefore it does not require a pump to pump it from the ground like my house. His family also uses propane to heat their home. It was very frustrating not being able to take a shower in my own home.
As I drove around the next few days, driving to the store and to friends’ houses, power crews were frantically repairing the power lines for the one and a half million households whose electricity had gone out (Cornwall, Warren and Christopher Schwarzen). Because of this, Governor Christine Gregoire, announced a state of emergency which brought power crews as far away as Texas to help repair the battered region (“Governor Gregoire”). While the streets were crowded with convoys of power trucks, power was slowly being restored. Some residents, such as my family, were completely out of electricity for as long as seven straight days. It was a disaster. No one should have to go without running water and electricity for that long.
In all, this storm proved to be disastrous and very frustrating for residents of the Greater Seattle area. With the consistent, painstaking labor of the power crews, full power was finally restored to the region. With Seattle’s location and its convergence zones, the climate is unpredictable. If it was not for the city’s geographical location, disasters such as this would not occur.
posted by Michael Bus at
8:27 AM
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