The Weatherman

Now I wish I had air conditioning!

It is so warm I’m sitting on my porch editing this…well, it is something like 84 in our house.

Update:  The low officially hit 68 degrees at our house.  It was not fun.

Yep, it’s going to get hot…mid 90s for all over the next 3 days with a very slow cool down (now they are saying the cool down will not be as big as expected with another warm up next week). The scariest part is the low at night…forecast to be around 66 degrees. Ouch! Not much relief especially since most around do not have AC. Check out Defeat the Heat at WSB for some ideas on cooling off.

Today wasn’t particularly hot…only 78 but right now at 9:30pm it is in the low 70s and the breeze we had earlier has all but died off. You can definitely feel that we are on the edge of a hot one.

From the NWS:

Monday: Partly sunny, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 80. North northeast wind between 6 and 14 mph.

Monday Night: Clear, with a low around 59. North northeast wind between 8 and 14 mph.

Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 89. North wind between 9 and 13 mph.

Tuesday Night: Clear, with a low around 63. North northeast wind between 7 and 13 mph.

Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 94.

Wednesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 63.

Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 89.

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

Snow, Ice, and Cars in Portland, OR.

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.

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.

Link to SeattlePI story.

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.

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.