Our day started with light rain but ended with a high around 75…not too shabby.
Sunrise: 5:10am
Sunset: 9:10pm
But we have 17h and 20m of visible light - that coincides with the civil twilight which starts at 4:31am and ends at 9:51pm. It’s nice having these really long days since you can do things like mow the lawn at 8pm at night - which is what I just finished doing.
We had a pretty warm day today - it got up to 84 degrees. But late this afternoon the clouds built up quickly and within a few hours we had overcast skies, but not your typical Seattle overcast. These were thunderheads moving up from the south. So the temp didn’t really drop much. We ended up getting about 10 minutes of rain and some Thunder - I love this stuff.
Here is what it looked like about 10 minutes before it started raining.
This is about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen
We got another 2 inches this morning. Steph took the truck to work and is still driving to work. I took the car to work…not too bad. The last steep hill in West Seattle was a bloody mess - two buses stuck halfway up the hill, one pickup was spun out on the side, another pickup was driving down the sidewalk…I went down the hill at about 1 MPH and made it safely.
This should be the end of it as it’s supposed to warm up a bit.
I had some photos I wanted to upload.
First, a quick update on the weather. It’s only gotten up to 28 today and it’s currently snowing very lightly. The side roads are hellish - solid ice. I’m even starting to have problems in 4 wheel drive on the steeper streets - guess that’s why those streets were closed off - maybe I should obey the signs.
The morning after the snow - from our front door.
Looking down 36th on the morning after the snow storm. All that slush froze and good portion is still there.
Icicles at the park (mom knows the park)
Driftwood at the park.
The park pictures were taken today so that’s why you don’t see snow at the water’s edge.
Zach had his surgery today to fix his undescended testicle - and it went very well. The worst part was during the morning prior to surgery since he couldn’t eat or drink - a tough task for a growing 20 month old. Since we’ve been home he’s been eating and drinking normally, plus he hasn’t missed a beat playing with toys. He’s even watched the movie Cars…of course.
On the weather front, it was cold today - the high was 31.9 and it’s 26 outside now. All side streets are solid ice - impassable in two wheel drive (mainly caused by the fact that it is very hilly here).
Inches of snow that is. Just when it looked quiet (only a 1/2 inch this morning) and we picked up 3 inches in about 3 hours. Heck, the plows were even out. Here are some picts.
Update 9:15pm: latest measurement is 3.75″
Update 9:30pm: this is the first street I’ve ever lived on where I saw a cross country skier. She was walking…err…skiing with her dog.
Update 8:00am (next morning): let’s make it 5 inches…wowsa!
We ended up having gusts to 70MPH here. Our power was out from around midnight on Thursday until noon on Friday…and we were lucky. Our neighbors behind us just got their power back after 40 hours. We just got phone/internet/cable back this afternoon.
A quick survey of our neighborhood and within walking distance there are numerous trees down - some on homes and some on power lines. Our trees in the backyard lost a few branches and our back fence will need some repair - 2 of the posts are broken and it’s leaning pretty bad.
And the weather keeps on coming. Today we got about an inch and a half of rain, but about .6″ fell in about 20 minutes. It flooded a section of our patio 4″ deep against our back door and the water started coming in. Fortunately our back door has a good seal. Between that and about 20 towels I saved our downstairs. If we weren’t home, I suspect we would have had water all over downstairs.
Now the wind is coming. SeaTac is showing steady wind of 32 MPH with gusts to 40 MPH. We are expecting sustained 40 MPH winds with gusts to 65 MPH. The coast is expecting gusts to 90 MPH. Check out this lame video - so you can hear the wind noise.
So we had the wettest month ever in Seattle history (or we are very close - need to confirm that one), followed by some off and on snow, then extremely icy temperatures, and now we have very cold weather. It’s currently 21F degrees outside and expected to dip into high teens here in West Seattle.
Better yet, I just checked the NWS and they have a Winter Storm Watch for our area tomorrow night. It appears the cold air will take a little time to mix out while the next storm hits us. I love this!!! Here are the details on the Winter Storm Watch.
…WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM WEDNESDAY EVENING
THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING..THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SEATTLE HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM
WATCH FOR MOST OF WESTERN WASHINGTON…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM
WEDNESDAY EVENING THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING. THE WATCH INCLUDES THE
URBAN CORRIDOR FROM CHEHALIS NORTH THROUGH THE SEATTLE METRO
AREA…EVERETT…AND BELLINGHAM.A VERY COLD ARCTIC AIR MASS HAS SETTLED OVER WESTERN WASHINGTON
BRINGING SUB FREEZING TEMPERATURES TO MOST AREAS. AN APPROACHING
FRONTAL SYSTEM WILL SPREAD MOISTURE OVER THIS COLD AIR WEDNESDAY
NIGHT AND THURSDAY MORNING CREATING A WINTRY MIX. PRECIPITATION
SHOULD BEGIN AS ALL SNOW…FIRST AT THE COAST EARLY WEDNESDAY
EVENING…SPREADING INLAND LATER IN THE EVENING. AS WARMER AIR
MOVES INTO THE AREA LATE WEDNESDAY NIGHT INTO THURSDAY
MORNING…SNOW WILL LIKELY CHANGE TO A MIX OF RAIN…SNOW AND
POSSIBLY SLEET OR FREEZING RAIN. THE WINTRY MIX WILL TAPER OFF
MIDDAY THURSDAY AS THE FRONT MOVES ACROSS THE AREA.AT THIS TIME…SNOW OR ICE ACCUMULATION REMAIN HIGHLY UNCERTAIN. IT
WILL DEPEND ON HOW QUICKLY WARMER AIR ALOFT MIXES DOWN TO THE
SURFACE.
Yep, it’s cold. It is 23F degrees this morning. And the roads are solid ice. The main roads are fine around here but all side streets are ice rinks.
The highways were a nightmare last night with some people on the road all night in order to get home from work or the football game.
Things are clearing up now. Tonight will be clear and cold (lows in the teens around here) so we’ll probably have lots of black ice tonight.
Looking down our walkway.
Update: Started snowing lightly again and the temperature is down to 27F degrees. I took a walk about an hour ago and things were very, very icy…including the road. There have been a ton of accidents involving people leaving the Seahawks game. Plus, in Issaquah, where we lived over the summer, they have picked up 4 to 5 inches of snow.
Well, you would know this if you watched the beginning of tonight’s MNF game…in Seattle against Green Bay. It started snowing about 20 minutes before the start of the game and continued for about 90 minutes. We got about an inch of snow at our house.
This snowfall was much drier since the air was cooler. Right now the temperature is 29F outside and expected to continue falling. This is going to cause all that water on the streets to freeze up hard - so driving in the morning could be very interesting.
Update: After this mornings snow event, it turned to rain and most of the snow was gone by early afternoon. At around 3pm the rain changed back to snow and we have another inch on the ground. It’s been snowing very lightly for several hours. Any showers that come over our area tonight could drop another inch or two of snow. It’s 32F degrees out now - a further drop in temperatures and we’ll have some serious ice on the roads.
Yep, we got some snow this morning. It started between 5 and 5:30am (yeah, Zach had us up). It snowed for a few hours before turning to rain. We ended up with about an inch of snow. What a great birthday gift for Steph!
Mom and Zach playing with the snow.
Dad’s aboriginal snowman.
Let me poop in the house just once.
Snow Play
What an amazing time! A high of 45 and it’s currently 37 and heading down…heading to the 20s. I finally live someone where it really feels like autumn.
Looks like we have a few cool nights coming up then plenty of rain. 
Update: We only got down to 31.8 degrees this morning. What a frost we had this morning - everything was solid white - very beautiful.
Sunrise that morning.
Like anyone doubted she was going to pass…For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, she passed the Washington State Bar. Now she has to take some goofy online class (a few hours long), get sworn in, and pay fees…then she can work. Of course, she needs to find a job for that to happen.
Anyway, a big congratulations out to Steph for studying, taking, and passing the bar.
In other news, Paul finally has the local weather getting piped up to the Internet. There is a link to it on the right side of the page or just click here. FYI, the the weather console is in the garage, so the inside temp is not really the tempurature inside the house but rather inside the garage.
Today we went to Ikea to get Zach his own little dining table and chairs. For $25 you get a little table and two chairs. We picked up some toys for him, a step stool, and some lamps for the bedroom.
This had to be one of the most perfect weekends weather-wise I’ve ever experienced. The days were warm (low to mid 80s) but not too hot, and the evenings were pleasant with no wind. The sunsets were incredible and many people were out late into the evening enjoying the weather.
In addition, Julia was in town from Germany and we got to see her at Golden Gardens Park. The picnic was at the beach at Golden Gardens from 6pm to 11pm. With Zach we obviously didn’t stay until 11pm, but I was amazed at how full the park was with people BBQing and others just hanging out on the beach. It was wonderful seeing Julia and meeting her Seattle friends - hopefully we’ll be able to see her in December when she returns for a visit.
Today, we spent the morning at Lincoln Park strolling with Zach and walking Lou. We had a very enjoyable walk along the Sound. Steph is now coming down with Zach’s cold so she laid low the rest of the day. I went on a bike ride through Lincoln Park and up thru Alki and back. Tonight I returned to Alki for some photo ops. I’ve pasted my favorites below.
Zach swining at Golden Gardens
A quiet evening on the sound.
Sunset at Golden Gardens
Sunset on Seattle
A little movie where Zach waves hi to his fans. He is playing with Grandma and showing off to the camera. Grandma joined us for the weekend since Steph had class and Paul is oncall. So we needed to make sure Zach had some company.
This last week saw some very high temperatures in the Bay Area. Now we are (finally) heating up in Seattle. Today the temp should be around 80 and getting closer to 90 on Sunday and Monday. Not too shabby after the cloudy weather we’ve had. Actually, the days have been pretty clear up here over the last week. While the temps are on the coolish side (high 60s/low 70s)…we don’t get the wind like in the Bay Area - and that I do NOT miss.
No one told us it rains in Seattle. Just Kidding. Well, we’ve been here for a day and a half and there is no sun. Cloudy and rain in the afternoons. Looks like it will be this way until Sunday…then we should see the evasive sun.
So far things have gone well (except for our buyers who are being difficult - more about that later). The trip up was smooth but very stressful. It took us 45 minutes just to check in our stuff (7 bags and 3 pets). The TSAs at the airport had me take each pet out of their crates one by one - no big deal except Oscar had already pee’d all over himself. So dad smelled like cat urine for the flight up…pleasant. I was able to cram all of our stuff into the mini-van with little room to spare.
Steph and I are going to start looking at homes with our realtor today and tomorrow. We’ll be checking out the I90 corridor today and then Shoreline/Edmonds/Lynnwood tomorrow. Steph and I will check out West Seattle on our own on Sunday.
Back to our home buyers. One thing to note, they are first time home buyers. Our house, like so many in the village have sloping issues. The heavy fireplaces caused these homes to settle lower on that side of the house. Sure, you can fix it, but no one has since it’s not worth it. Plus it doesn’t cause any immediate structural concerns. The buyers also want a larger living room so they want to knock out a wall (not our problem). They had a structural engineer investigate the foundation and the wall - this first engineer was not concerned with the sloping but suggested $8-10k of other foundation work (replacing some concrete footings).
Next came the home inspection…I’ve been part of about 5 home inspections and they typically take 60 to 90 minutes. Their guy took 3 1/2 hours. In 3 1/2 hours you will find tons of problems with any house. This guy makes the buyers fearful of the sloping issue…also, this home inspector was not familiar with homes in the village (based on a conversation I had with him).
Now the buyers want to bring in a second structural engineer…of course, he gives them a totally different opinion. He’s claims the house needs the sloping fixed at a cost of $25k. Crap…these guys will tell you anything you want to hear.
So what do I care? We just put the home back on the market and be done with it. Not so simple. Now that the buyers have gotten these multiple varying opinions - we are obligated to disclose all of this in the future. Any new home buyer will look at this as a mega foundation project - it will most likely scare anyone away. The sad thing is we could have asked for $820k for the home but we chose to ask for $805k since we wanted to sell it quickly and we understand that no home is perfect.
When we moved in we had a structural engineer investigate the foundation for us. He concluded that some work could be done, but wasn’t necessary. He was only concerned with the sloping assuming this was the only house that sloped, otherwise, no big deal.
Now we are in a waiting game.
This latest set of storms has brought some unusual cold weather. Storms generally don’t bring cold air with it, but last night we had snow at unusual spots throughout the area. San Francisco streets were whitened as were streets in Berkeley. Even 280 was closed between 92 and Edgewood Road. Unfortunately, we did have a serious 31 car pileup in Marin County because of the unexpected snow and ice.
Yesterday afternoon I took a quick drive along Skyline from 92 to Saratoga Summit. There was only snow, about an inch, at Saratoga Summit. This morning I took the same drive but was greeted to a winter wonderland on Kings Mountain. It’s a beautiful site to see Redwood trees with snow on them. I posted pictures at paulandsteph.com. Below are some of my favorites.
Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve.
Skyline on Kings Mountain.
Quiet mountain setting.
