November 02, 2013

Major Windstorm

This event is living up to the model predictions I showed you last night.  This is strongest wind event since last December, and is worsened by the substantial amounts of leaves on

 Sammamish Saturday Morning

the trees and the growth during the past year.   Roughly 100,000 people are out of power right now:  here is the Seattle City Light outage map.   Worse conditions are north of the city.


 I just drove home after attempting to some shopping.  Costco on Aurora and QFC at Northgate both lost power and were on generators.  Most of my travel was in areas without power.   Returning home I caught a glimpse of Lake Washington. Wow.  Lots of big whitecaps.  Here is the lastest shot of the I90 bridge...big waves breaking over the structure.  520 bridge was closed.

 Puget Sound Energy does not have a web map or any information other than some tweets.  They need to do better.

Here are the max gusts for the 24-h ending at 11 AM.  I always think as 40 mph as being the magic number...above that speed and loads of damage and power outages occur. You see than many station around Puget Sound, NW Washington, and the coast achieved this speed.  Some locations got above 50 mph.

Ready to be impressed?  Here are the gusts at West Point, which you know extends out over Puget Sound from Discovery Park.  Peak of 52 knots or 60 mph.   That is serious wind.


We have wind sensosr on some Washington State ferries.    Consider the ride this morning between Kingston and Edmonds at 8:47 AM....BEFORE conditions were worst.  46 knots or 53 mph.  That must have been quite an adventure.


The southerly winds over Puget Sound have peaked and will now subside.  We are now ready for stage II of this event:  the eastward surge of strong winds down the Strait. Folks on central and northern Whidbey should get ready for this. Now.

And then stage III: snow in the mountains.  Cooler air is already starting to flood in aloft.

Announcement:  Ivar's Mukilteo Landing restaurant (my favorite weather-themed eating establishment) will have a special dinner and a presentation (by me) to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the on storm that destroyed the restaurant in 2003.  It will take place next Thursday, November 7.  More information here.  Limited to 40 people.

Seattle Residents:   Please consider voting for Sue Peters for School Board. Check out my previous blog for more information.  Corporate ed interests, pushing charter schools, excessive testing, strict control of teachers, and heavy use of computerized instruction are pushing their own candidate, backing by hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy donors and Pacs.  Sue Peters will be a strong, experienced, and articulate voice on the school board....and she supports good math education.  If you vote for only one race, please vote on this one.


15 comments:

  1. Just south of Chehalis. 1PM Saturday. Lots of wind but nothing severe this morning. Blue skies in all directions, lots of clouds too. Sun Room is now heating the house.

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  2. I was driving in north Kitsap County this morning around 10am when a large branch snapped, hit a power line, and all of a sudden the ground/shrubs caught on fire just 10 yards in front of someone's home! Fortunately the fire dept was there quickly!!

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  3. Thanks for the comment re: PSE map... I really do not understand why this would not be heavily implemented. Supposedly I could go to Twitter. But that method doesn't do it for me. The map could be quite useful. We can send men to the moon....

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  4. Had a fun ride across I-90 at 10am before things got rolling

    Headed north right into the heart of power out 220th north to Lynnwood.

    But I lve the bluster, the falling leaves and the smell of fir trees ( Christmas) in the air.

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  5. 54mph, Normandy park

    Weather station Id: NOAA dw1735

    Brutal wins here!

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  6. North Kitsap: Woke at 8am to my computer off but lights on. Several blinks of the power from 8am to around 1pm caused our router to screw up the net, much to my online gaming daughter's huge dislike. It's 2:30ish and dead calm here now. Guess we are the lucky ones.

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  7. Kudos to you, Cliff, and the weather service, and the associated modeling. You folks had this storm pegged.

    I always think how nice it must feel for you meteorologists to peg a storm, and see it hit as predicted.

    I, being somewhat vain, would feel smug in knowing that I was successful in a prediction. Especially one based on science and up to date modeling.
    Thank you, gang. Thank you very much.

    A job well done. And I am proud of you.

    Low clouds and fog burnoff are one thing, but your track record in predicting serious events has improved immensely in my 62 years of life...

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  8. Thanks for these posts. I was on the 935am Bainbridge ferry. Strong sustained winds and wicked gusts out there in the middle where there's long fetch.

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  9. No real weather event to speak of here in Whatcom County. Rain & wind, yes, but that's Western Washington in November.

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  10. Amazing how the wind just switched off as this system passed by.

    Tons of people still in the dark up here in NE Seattle, at 7:15p. Not us; we had flickers but the real nightmare was 5 hours of no Internet. :-)

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  11. Our house anemometer (Davis Inst.) recorded a gust of 45 mph SSW, which agrees pretty well with the Schoolnet Weather station 0.8 miles away that peaked at 42 mph SSW. We were without power for almost exactly six hours in east Bellevue. We played three board games at Crossroads with some friends, ate some food, and enjoyed the packed but friendly mall.

    Thanks for the good call on this one... I had fresh batteries in everything and gas in the car, and all is well.

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  12. sunny and 74 this AM on the Patio in San Diego. Will be in Seattle next weekend to restore rust layer.
    I´ll be sure to bring my kite.

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  13. Could it be that the center of this low that hit us be the same center low from Typhoon Lekima that dissipated to tropical storm status far east of Japan about seven or eight days ago; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Lekima_%282013%29

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  14. Very strong gusts in the eastern Columbia Gorge too....up to 60 mph east of Maryhill!

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  15. Cliff ~ What are the other models (European and NAM) saying about the upcoming storms the GFS is showing for the 7th, 14th, and
    17th? I know the latter two are a ways out, but today they look to be good sized storms.

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Please make sure your comments are civil. Name calling and personal attacks are not appropriate.

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