Hey - I’m in Redmond and trying to find some civilization with power on the east side. I’m currently on a laptop with about 10 minutes of battery left. I can check this thread tomorrow - looking for something to do while the power is out at home! (hopefully with wi fi and a place to charge my cell phone).
Thanks!
[QUOTE=Glory]
Hey - I’m in Redmond and trying to find some civilization with power on the east side. I’m currently on a laptop with about 10 minutes of battery left. I can check this thread tomorrow - looking for something to do while the power is out at home! (hopefully with wi fi and a place to charge my cell phone).
Thanks!
[/QUOTE]
Find an internet cafe with WiFi, assuming you have it on your laptop–most places are pretty cool about plugging in, especially if you really tank up on the espresso drinks and buy some pastry. After all, why shouldn’t you–it’s been a rough day, relax and get some sugar/caffeine high going! 
Note to self, reading for comprehension is your friend–sigh…
Looks like the Pacific Highway Cam took some abuse. It looks as if either the camera’s enclosure was knocked down, or the camera was knocked up. (heh.) The top half of the frame is the enclosure. And normally the camera pans every 20 seconds. It hasn’t moved all day.
Heh. Tripped over fallen branches on my way to work. Might have seen them if the streetlights were working. Everything seems pretty messed up. When I got into work, our signage was down. This doesn’t sound like much, but our signage is three large standards attached to huge (and sturdy) flag-poles. Two were bent 45 and 80 degrees, and one was lying on the ground.
Lots of people with power out, trees across the roads, traffic lights not working, or bent around so they face the intersecting road. Woah.
Our power seemed to have stayed on all day, and I have groceries now. Saw lots of branches and a few trees down.
Peter who lives in the apartment building on Yates: You are a !@#%^ MORON. Yes, we the property management company are deliberately keeping you in the dark. Yes, call and abuse me all afternoon. Go right ahead. You are too stupid to…
Ah, hell, it’s Friday. Here’s to a calm night tonight. Except…
It smells like snow is coming.
Power went out for about four hours last evening, but today’s been beautiful for the most part.
By coincidence, I’d bought one of those batteryless-bulbless flashlights a week or so ago: you shake them to charge a capacitor and they use a low-power LED for light. The first generation ones were really dim, but the new one isn’t too bad (it’s no halogen lamp, but it’s enough light to get around with). A few seconds of shaking gives you a minute or two of light, supposedly 30-seconds will give you ten minutes, but I’m too lazy. Anyway, it worked pretty well for getting around the house.
The other interesting thing is that our gas-powered fireplace, which is turned on by a light-switch in the wall, worked during the outage. I don’t know where it was getting the power when I flipped the switch.
I have friends in Manchester and Vancouver. How did those places do?
I’m sending out my best wishes to my fellow PNW Dopers who are still in dark today. Our power came back on at 10:45 last night, 24 1/2 hours after it went out. The owner of our building came around this morning to see how everyone was doing and was surprised that we had power. At her house, a mile or so away, there’s no such luck yet.
I’m in Burien, just west of Sea-Tac Airport. It was hard to believe that during the worst of the storm, there were still planes taking off. I could hear them and even see one occasionally. Whether there were others landing, I don’t know. Yesterday, however, somehow the power to the ground radar went out, so there were no planes coming or going for a while, even though it was calm.
TikkiDad, TikkiSis and I all did fine. All those candles I’d saved up over the years finally got put to good use. TikkiDad got out his camp stove and set it up on his kitchen stove so that the carbon monoxide would go up the vent and we all had hot chocolate. Boy, was that good!
Exploring the neighborhood, there was a 70-80 foot tall fir tree that fell over one of the main streets just a couple of blocks away. Fortunately, no one got hurt and it didn’t appear to have hit any buildings. A friend’s neighbor’s girlfriend wound up with a tree in her bedroom but she wasn’t hurt.
I was kind of surprised yesterday when I saw that at least two of the three hummingbirds that visit TikkiDad’s feeder managed not to get blown away and were zipping to and fro as if everything was business as usual.
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
I remember the windstorm that took out the Hood Canal Bridge many years ago – I think it was during the Thanksgiving holiday. We lived on Beacon Hill and our windows were bowing.
This must have been much worse than that.
[/QUOTE]
Looking it up, that occurred on February 13, 1979. It must have been a warm winter because I remember we went camping up near Port Townsend not long after. It seems like it was only a few days but probably late March by then. We drove all the way around the south end of Puget Sound and stopped at the bridge to have a look at it. You could walk right up to the western part that slopes down to the pontoons that make up most of the bridge. Only now, there were no pontoons for it to connect to and it sloped at a very steep angle into the depths of Hood Canal. It really looked strange.
Here’s hoping all of you Dopers and your loved ones are safe through this thing. Especially those of you on the coast and in rural areas. I’m sending warm thoughts your way.
I live in Redmond, off of Avondale - still no power (although there is power up the road by 320 - the Target has power). Last night was very very very dark, cold and depressing in my apartment. I went into work this morning - yay, power! Hot water, showers, hot beverages, warmth, internet 
Working on 42 hours without power. According to the Puget Sound Energy site, they have restored power to nearly 250K people, that means 500K of us are still without power. I just have my fingers crossed I get power back before tomorrow’s 3 hour Survivor finale!
I am trying to find some stuff to do on the east side. I’ve heard rumors that power is back on at Bellevue Square, Bellevue Galleria and Redmond Towne Center. I might go see a movie. I definitely want to find something for dinner - 3 meals of PB&J is getting kind of old.
It’s such a relief to have power at work though - I charged up my cell phone, I don’t feel so isolated anymore.
I got power restored at about 5 a.m. this morning, so I was without power for just over 2 days. Random observations:
Big tree down across powerlines on Madison all day Friday and half of Saturday. The crews had more important things to work on. I felt sorry for the cop who ended up sitting there all day.
At least half a dozen trees down across the road in the Arboretum. On average in the areas I walked through, imagine a tree down across powerlines, across the street, or on a car or house every block or two.
Walked back to where I saw this:
A car got inundated and swept off the road, so I think I had gotten there after the waters had already started to recede.
It was an adventure to find gas on Saturday–the places that had gas didn’t have power, and the places that had power were out of gas.
It got chilly in my apartment–the warmest spot was in the mid-50s. This wasn’t too bad, of course–just put on some sweats and threw an extra blanket on the bed. Of course, the news had stories about people bringing generators, barbecues, and other sources of carbon monoxide indoors.
Massive puddle of water and mud in the street in Madison Valley. I don’t know the exact location of where that one lady drowned, though.
There were big differences in the rate at which people got power back. I lost power for two days, while other neighborhoods a couple miles away only lost power for a few hours.
Links to the main pages of local papers–look for the “photo gallery” links if you want to see lots of pictures of downed trees:
Here is an article that gives more information about the woman who drowned in her house. The article talks about water problems in the area of 30th Ave. E. and East John, but it doesn’t say whether that’s where she lived.
Her name was Kate Fleming, and she narrated audiobooks under the name of Anna Fields. Anna Fields was her great-grandmother, a vaudeville star from the early 1900’s.
Other than a smashed windshield and a branch that jabbed through our roof everyone here came through fine. Power’s still out at our place on Vashon Island. Luckily the business core is back up, the Library is warm, lighted, and internet connected. Yum. We’ve been sleeping under 12 blankets with all the kids in our bedroom…the thermometer was 49F in the living room this morning. Luckily it’s so cold our chest freezer is likely doing fine. If we don’t get power tomorrow we’ll have to find a friend with power to take a couple hundred bucks worth of frozen meat.
Dear lord. 120 mph winds? That’s tornado strength. Hope all the NW U.S. and S.W. Canadian Dopers are okay.
Just left my apartment - power guys working on a huge downed tree next door said we would be without power until Wednesday - at the earliest. He tried to cheer me up by saying we would definitely have power by Christmas. I did not find that very cheery at all. Nobody I know well enough to sleep on their couch has power (most of my friends are on the east side). My battery powered lantern just died, I hope the stores have had their supplies replenished!
[QUOTE=Glory]
Just left my apartment - power guys working on a huge downed tree next door said we would be without power until Wednesday - at the earliest. He tried to cheer me up by saying we would definitely have power by Christmas. I did not find that very cheery at all. Nobody I know well enough to sleep on their couch has power (most of my friends are on the east side). My battery powered lantern just died, I hope the stores have had their supplies replenished!
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My e-mail addy is in my profile. We have an extra bed.
We were very, very fortunate. No loss of power, no damage. We were without cable tv and internet until about noon yesterday, but that was the extent of our misery.
However, just across the road from us everything is still black. In my travels yesterday and today, I saw many downed trees, very large trees.
My mother, who lives in Tacoma lost a venerable old apple tree to the storm. This particular tree was probably around a hundred years old and was still producing lovely apples. It was completely uprooted. Fortunately, the tree didn’t hit her house. She’s got quite a mess on her hands, though. The other tree, which didn’t produce many apples, managed to survive the storm.
Power just came on about 6 hours ago here. 2.5 days without electricity is about 2.0 too many. Just had to throw out a whole fridge and freezer worth of food. But our water heater and our stove is gas so we had that going for us.
Makes you darn grateful for the simple things, though. Welcome back heat and light!
For lighting purposes, I just put on a cap and clipped on an Arc AAA Premium flashlight. It puts out as much light as a mini-Mag Lite, and it runs at full brightness for somewhere between 5-7 hours on a single AAA battery.
I’m going to have to clean out the fridge and freezer. I had to make an extra trip to Ballard today after I regained power–I’d bought a chunk of frozen lutefisk to bring home to my dad for Christmas (it’s one of those godawful traditions), and it thawed for I’m not sure how long, so I needed to get a replacement. I’m not sure which is worse–having spoiled lutefisk, or being unable to determine whether your lutefisk has actually spoiled or not.
Glory, I don’t have an extra bed, but if you feel like crashing on a couch in a bachelor’s apartment, feel free to let me know. Or if you need to borrow a flashlight and batteries, let me know as well–I have plenty of extras.
Our power came back on around 4:00 pm Friday - we’re one of the lucky ones I guess. No damage to house or trees, as far as I can see. Just a few blocks away trees are down all along the main arterial.
Had to/decided it was better to throw out all the perishables in the fridge (milk, eggs, etc.) and buy new stuff. Also enough thawing in the refrigerator/freezer that water started to run out of the bottom of the freezer. Had to stick a pan under there and mop up the mess.
A friend of our who lives in an apartment complex in the southern Lynnwood area doesn’t have his power back yet. He’s been staying with us since Friday. He’s really starting to get annoyed; everyplace around the complex has their power back, but his complex remained unlit.