Category Archives: Weather

It always snows more somewhere else. That’s especially true with the much-delayed storm that blew into Western Washington early this morning. South Puget Sound was hit harder than Kitsap County and Seattle, with Tacoma reporting 8 inches of snow and up to a foot accumulating in Olympia. Although only about 3 inches of the white stuff fell at my house, I may have one of the region’s better snow drifts (see photo).

The knife-edged drift was caused by a strong wind blowing from Dyes Inlet down the length of Mud Bay. When it hit the north end of my house, the wind split and was funneled between the side of the house and the steep hillside that borders the front parking area. At its highest point the drift is 30 inches tall. All that snow had to come from somewhere, and as the photo shows, the flat part of my driveway is almost clear. There’s plenty of snow left on the steep part though, so I’m snowed in at least until tomorrow.

Marine Drive and Rocky Point were briefly bridged about noon today by a gorgeous rainbow (see photo). The multicolored arc was encouraging—you don’t see one unless the sun is shining—but short-lived. As I write this the weather is back to showers followed by rain followed by showers. If there is a pot of gold where the rainbow’s west end touched down at the tip of Marine Drive, it looks like an easy dig at low tide. Does anyone have a clam rake?

About 2:20 PM this afternoon high winds toppled a clump of fir trees in the 2500 block of Rocky Point Road blocking the road and knocking out power briefly for the second time today. By chance I was returning home from a bike ride just after the trees went down. With a couple of chainsaws, a big pickup truck, and the efforts of about a dozen of us, the road was open for traffic in about 15 minutes. When I returned later with my camera, the only evidence of the big crash (see photo) was a pile of branches and a man loading some free firewood. As one of the chainsaw operators, he was welcome to it.

Most of western Washington has been under a high wind advisory today with gusts of up to 60 mph forecast for the coast. Tonight the local TV stations will respond with coverage of big waves, downed trees, and other evidence of the storm. There won’t be any footage from Rocky Point though as we were too fast for any newshounds looking for wind damage. Our community effort even beat the fire department. The last few branches were being dragged off the road just as a red ladder truck from the Westgate station showed up. The number of cars backed up in both directions by the short delay surprised me. But the wait could have been a lot longer.

It’s clear, 38 degrees F, and windy. It’s also December 30th so perhaps the latter two should be expected. The photo, taken from my deck, looks north across Dyes Inlet toward Alaska Silverdale. It doesn’t show the whitecaps as well as I hoped or any windsurfers, a species seldom found this far north in winter. Come to think about it, paddleboard man hasn’t been out for a few days either, although I haven’t been looking for him. I was gone over Christmas visiting family in Del Mar, CA, where it rained about as much as it did here.

For the record this post is the first written with a used replacement keyboard I got this morning at Northwest Computer for $5. The old one died yesterday after being swamped by a serious coffee spill. Who knows what inspiring prose the replacement keyboard’s previous owner wrote with it. Hopefully it will inspire me to do more writing in 2011.