Results tagged “Weather” from V2
Thankfully, Friday is actually forecast to be the start of a veritable cold snap, with highs only reaching the mid 80s!(image gratuitously stolen from a Facebook user who undoubtedly stole it from someone who stole it from another thieving image thief...)
We've got nearly seven inches here on Sunnyside, and it doesn't show any sign of letting up tonight. With slightly warmer temperatures forecast, tomorrow could spell the end of the dense snowpack, but at this close to freezing things could stay ugly for a while. Here's a walk around the neighborhood while it was reasonably navigable this afternoon.
"This is not what I signed up for!"
(Meanwhile I'm in Buffalo, where it is currently 50 and climbing at 1 am.)
Given our typical lack of any real thunderstorm activity, it's interesting to note that the 4th of July holiday in 2006 also started with some strong night-time thunderstorms, then more during the afternoon prior to the fireworks (and massive fire.)
But remember, summer in Seattle doesn't officially start until July 5...
UPDATE: And how could I forget the thunderstorms that produced the lightning seen in the photos I use in my site banner? Those storms occurred overnight on July 12, 2007... apparently there's something special about early in the month of July.
No local link yet for pictures or archives, but it is once again sending data to the Weather Underground... and now with exciting improvements like updates every ten seconds and using only 4% of the electricity it formerly used to for the task!
As the neighbor who drove past as I was installing the station on the back fence asked, "What are you, some sort of scientist?"
After that we got a surprise phone call that my grandmother had been taken to the emergency room with chest pains, although after many hours there and a few tests they decided it was some issue with her sternum and not her heart, and a few doses of vicodin were in order.
Tonight the temperature has plunged from a high in the mid 50s at about 1 pm down to the mid 20s, and the winds are in the 40 mph range with gusts over 60, and changed from a steady downpour that melted all the snow into new lake-effect snow blowing every direction except straight down. Nasty weather, and a ood niht to stay in and avoid the sure-to-be slick roads. I guess it just wouldn't be a December for me without a wind storm or two!
Nothing like starting a vacation like this.
Me (after the dog awoke me at 9 am): "Ugh, I need some coffee."
Mom: "Oh, I can dig out the coffee maker, I think there's some coffee still in the pantry."
Me: "You have coffee? How old is it? I can just get some at Tim Hortons."
Mom: "Well, I have some Folgers here somewhere, and it's on my grocery list."
Me: "So we don't have any coffee."
Mom: "I have Folgers."
Me: "So we don't have any coffee."
Anyway, it was good to hit up Timmy Ho's and get some cheap, strong coffee (and not have them look at you strangely when all you want is a drip), and then Karen and I headed to the Walden Galleria, a plan apparently shared by the entire rest of the city and half of Toronto. On the bright side, we were quite successful and took care of everything we needed in about three hours, but it still reminded me why I hate malls and the general greed and commercialism that has come to symbolize the American Dream. This year's big trick is apparently the "Buy one and get the second half-off" sale, because after you've spent $50 on a tie it helps to justify the insane cost by instead spending $75 on two, so they really only cost you $37.50 each. What a bargain!
From there I took a walk around the neighborhood. Although very little has overtly changed in the twenty-one months since I last set foot in the region, a massive and unexpected October 2006 lake-effect snowstorm wreaked devastation on the trees of the region, which had not yet lost their leaves for the year. The event was initially dubbed "the night the trees wept" by the Buffalo News, until it was pointed out that you can't weep when you're dead. Somewhere along the way it was re-christened "Arborgeddon" and that's the name it is now commonly known by, and yet somehow that is still an understatement. Some areas were without power for several weeks (my parents were among the lucky ones -- no damage to the house and only a week in the dark.) For a town that once prided itself on its tall, mature maples, elms and oaks, this set Tonawanda back decades, with many streets and neighborhoods looking like brand new developments -- only tiny saplings and shrubs now standing in place of the mammoth trunks that were violently hewn from the earth. Though the thousands of tons and millions of dollars of damage have been cleaned up and the power lines re-strung, the remaining trees stand like silent amputees, with broken and twigless boughs pointing up with angry jagged fingers toward the source of their lacerations. I did my best to capture a sense of these silent sentinels to last year's fury, although as is often the case, small photographs simply cannot convey the magnitude, both in severity and scope, of the event. You can view the shots (and find some links to sites with pictures and stories from last year during the cleanup) here.
Finally, I saw Beowulf in 3D this evening, which was quite entertaining from a 'check your brain at the door and enjoy bright shiny theatrical effects with scary monsters' standpoint. A few of the extreme close-up effects made my eyes water, but overall the 3D effect was quite impressive and it's come a long way from the crummy red-and-blue glasses of yesteryear.
The flooding south of Olympia has been nothing short of devastating, with I-5 between Olympia and Portland now closed for more than 72 hours and the only truck detour requiring an additional 450 miles of driving and two snowy mountain passes. This picture is from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website this morning. Click that link to go to the related story.
Up here on Capitol Hill in Seattle things have dried out, and never got as bad as what happened to the north and south -- there was some street flooding and a few downed trees, but nothing that came up over your ankles or washed away bridges or homes.
Oh yeah, and apparently I successfully defended a thesis dissertation this afternoon. All that remains is to make a few final revisions to the document and turn it in to the graduate school office, and then after slightly more than twenty-four years of schooling, I'm done.
Wow.
I'm sure in another week or two it'll finally hit me, but for now... wow.
Of course, by tomorrow night it's supposed to be back into the mid-40s, so as usual this is a fleeting moment to savor while those stuck moving today are probably panicking about slick roads. (as usual, click image to enlarge.)
A reward is available to anyone who has information leading to the whereabouts of our summer or those who apparently kidnapped it and added it to the rest of the country's ongoing heat wave.
A crow perched yesterday on my weather station's wind vane. The angle of the sun on the anemometer must have resulted in a flashing pattern as it spun which attracted his attention. In these pictures the vane is pointing east due to him spinning on it, even though the wind was actually coming from the north. As seen in the second shot, he reached down and physically stopped the anemometer with his beak and held it still for a few moments before finally taking off and returning to a nearby tree.
Taken from our kitchen, Queen Anne, Seattle, WA - July 30, 2007 (click images to enlarge)
We don't often see thunderstorms in this area of the country. Something to do with the geography messing with weather patterns that normally form them. When we do get a storm, it generally consists of one or two flashes of lighting, a rumble of thunder, and everyone gasping at how wild it was. Last night was something of an anomaly, however, as we had a whole string of storms rolling along the foothills of the Cascades and up the Puget Sound corridor. These two pictures were of a cell that was located somewhere over the Kitsap Peninsula. I set up the nice digital SLR on a tripod out on the back deck, opened up the shutter and crossed my fingers. Among the hundred or so useless shots I managed to capture a few strikes.
Kitsap Peninsula (as viewed from Queen Anne, Seattle), Washington - July 12, 2007 (click images to enlarge)
NaNoWriMo 2007
