Going into Bellingham, traffic was backed up for a couple of miles; probably due to a fallen tree. Traffic signals were out. Coming home, the crossing guards at the train tracks kept coming down and going up. I went around them. Branches down all over the place. On the street I take to get to the house, a tree is down across it. Had to go round by the beach.
Got home, and the power is out. I started up the Honda generator and have power for the TV, cable, and Internet. No lights or phone. In the kitchen, I lit a Coleman lantern. I put a cast-iron frying pan on top of it to keep the burritos warm until Wifey gets home.
Good thing I keep my computer charged. I hope they fix it soon. I only have about 7 hours of fuel in the genny.
Anyway… I spoke too soon. Not long after I made that post, the Cable/Internet/phone failed. We still had the TV and DVD player, thanks to the generator, and Wifey-- who was on call this weekend – could keep her phone charged. She couldn’t get through to a couple of patients, probably because their phones were out. At least we had water. The tree that blocked my way home Saturday and took out some power lines, also took out a water main its roots had grown around. So we were lucky that way. Still no power this morning. PSE says it may be 1800 Tuesday before power is restored. I’m hoping it’s sooner. We’ve used very, very little hot water. Wifey had an Army-style shower yesterday, and I took one this morning. (I guess coming from a Navy family, mine was a Navy shower. ) I’m in Seattle today, so I have Internet. Yay!
Paid close to $200 to have the roof and gutters cleaned in anticipation of putting the house on the market this next week. Looked out the window Saturday morning and it was snowing fir tree needles. The needles covered everything. Looks like I’m getting up on the roof this week to reclean it.
I’m on the coast side, so we’ve had no trouble with fires. I don’t know how the fires are doing on the other side of the mountains, as I’ve been electronically isolated.
I’m lucky (and further south). Power back on Sunday morning around 5 am (at which point only half of the 175,000 people had their power restored). My receptionist only lives 15 miles away, and she’s still without power, so that’s two whole days and counting.
Internet has been pretty consistent, though, as long as we had the power to keep it on.
My power came back on after about 10 hours - I left and saw a double feature at the local second-run theater, which still had power. But now there’s a huge fallen branch in my backyard squashing my shed, snapped off a neighbor’s mostly dead tree - this solitary branch still had leaves on it, and was massively heavy. I have a $500 deductible on my homeowner’s policy, so I guess I’m stuck. But because the tree branch was an obvious hazard waiting to snap off a dead tree whose all other branches had already been pruned off, I’m hoping to show negligence and perhaps not have to fork out $500.
The generator is running, and I ran an extension to the fridge and stove hood lights – and moved the coffee maker back to the kitchen. Wifey had already plugged in the lamp in the living room. We’ll run the generator while we catch up on Hell On Wheels and Fear The Walking Dead and shut it down at a reasonable hour. I’ll fire it up again mañana so we can have coffee in the morning and I can log onto work.
The generator had a bit over half a tank of fuel Saturday. We’ve run through 4.5 gallons, and Wifey filled it up a couple of hours ago with another 2.25 gallons. I went out and refilled the can a little bit ago.
Looks like the reason we have Internet and cable is because Comcast put a generator up on top of the box on the pole outside. I hope it has enough gas to last through tomorrow!
PSE’s website is now saying power won’t be restored until midnight tomorrow.
Medina (home to bill gates, jeff Bezos and other billionaires), Clyde Hill and North Bellevue had power out on Saturday. Ours came on about 9:30 pm. Dunno about the Gates’
Well, that’s probably why they used the word “estimate”.
I guess I’ve been out of touch - the only weather(ish) news I’ve heard about Washington is the fires. Of course, here in the lower right hand quarter of the map, we’ve been paying attention to Hurricane Erika. Was this a typhoon, or just a hellacious storm?
) I’m in Seattle today, so I have Internet. Yay!