Washington Winter Storm 12/03/2007

The weather over the last day and a half has been interesting, to say the least! It's been raining off and on for several days, which is pretty normal for around here this time of the year, but yesterday afternoon it started RAINING BIG TIME! It was starting to remind me of the rain you get in the more tropical regions. The main difference is that in the tropics it often rains heavily, then it quickly clears, and then it's back to the sunshine. Not here. We had moderate to heavy rain all afternoon, all night, and well into today. It was gusty, but not really windy until today, when it started blowing much harder, starting to shake the house.

The "Perfect Storm" for around here would have three parts. First, a good hard freeze for several days to get frost well into the ground, followed by a rapid thaw. This aerates the soil and loosens it up. Second, a day or so of heavy rain to totally saturate the already loose soil. Third, high winds. All of the tree's roots will easily pull out since the soil is loose and somewhere between soup and jello for consistency. The wind knocks over trees everywhere, putting everyone several days away from electrical service being restored. If you really want to add to the scenario, it should snow heavily, then drop to sub-zero temperatures for a week or so. To finish it off, a fast thaw and more rain to flood everything.

We've had two or three of these happen in sequence in the past, but fortunately not all of it at any one time, thank goodness!

By Noon it was getting obvious that we were going to lose power as the lights were starting to flicker. Shortly thereafter the lights went out completely. Being highly trained in the proper response to such outages, I consulted with Rocket, our cat, to see if he agreed, and since he did, I took a nap. Shortly thereafter KeeWee conked out too, along with Rocket.

Several hours later the lights came back on, signifying time to get up. I got up, checked the power to see if it was up to full voltage with my trusty Fluke meter, and since it was, fired up the computer to put up a post and let everyone know we rode it out (slept it out?) just fine......