Live blogging tonight's storm

Supposed to be a wet and windy one out there. It's already pretty dicey but I thought a first-hand account might be interesting. At least until the power goes out. Stay safe and feel free to share your stories in the comments below.

5:05pm - The drive home driving down Dock St, there was a response just north of the 11th St bridge of probably 4 or 5 fire trucks and a handful of other fire dept SUVs. No visible evidence of a major problem, train derailment or fire.

5:15pm - A couple of blue-ish flares in the sky near our home neighborhood. Couldn't tell whether it was lightning but I suspected it was a couple transformers blowing.

5:30pm - Plenty of flickers of the lights here at home. I prepped a bit by getting out a couple flashlights and candles. I also shut off and unplugged our desktop computers as well as our TV/entertainment center.

5:56pm - Power just blinked out for about a second. No loud pops or buzzes here but I'll be keeping a close eye out. I may end up eating my sandwich by candle light tonight. Sounds like a nearby neighbor's home alarm system didn't care for the power going off.

6:30pm - Sarah made it home from a couple errands just fine. I poked my head outside and actually saw a bit of clearing in the sky with a lone star peeking out. Seems to have calmed down a bit too. The power lines were absolutely dancing around out there earlier.

7:47pm - We headed out to grab Sarah some Panda Express and it was pretty calm. We drove the long way home to take a gander at the newly holiday lit Narrows bridge. It was positively lovely. Sounds like the wind's kicking up again outside though so we'll see how long this live blogging stuff lasts. That and the server will go down if we lose power anyway. No worries, everything will be right back up once all is well with the world again. For now, let's just not go there.

8:10pm - Now the rain's picked back up and some of our gutters are certainly overflowing. The drops hitting the windows sounds huge. Couple flickers of the lights happening again too.

8:37pm - Busted out our sweet little emergency radio. This puppy can run on crank power and handles TV bands as well as a weather radio. It even has a white LED flashlight, red blinking LED, an audio siren and wires to charge cell phones. We got it using some points on one of our credit cards and I would urge anybody to get one. It's pretty small too so easily fits somewhere in your car.

8:41pm - Dang, with these gust roaring outside and jolting our house, I'd really hate to be stuck in a hurricane.

9:39pm - Although the power's not out it may as well be. Pretty much everything is unplugged except the wireless router. Sarah and I have been watching videos on YouTube and listening to (and my cranking) the weather radio. Still pretty darn gusty outside, too. It's probably consistently blowing above 20 MPH. Some gusts seem to jolt our doors. Probably going to be soon enough so we'll see if it keeps us up at all.

So, overall it was a wild night. Things were banging around quite a bit outside especially around midnight. Saw dozens of transformer flashes outside and certainly couldn't get to sleep until things calmed down at 1am.

Comments (3) | To Top

12/14/2006 @ 8:17pm

No loss of power down here in Orting yet, although the lights have been flickering a bit throughout the day. I certainly hate being sick but its much nicer to watch the stormy weather from the comfort of my own home.

by Reena

12/17/2006 @ 5:43pm

Hey, your site is back. Congrats.

I hope you have saved up a massive amount of photos for us.

by Erik

12/17/2006 @ 5:48pm

Thanks Erik. We are back up and running. I have a handful of pics but really kinda' stayed out of the way most of the weekend. Besides, how many downed tree photos can anyone stand to look at? ;)

More soon...

by KevinFreitas