Stormageddon 2012

Because of the events that have transpired this week, we have been without power, phone, or anything else for several days. Because we were without internet I basically used my laptop as a running journal of what was going on, logging events as they happened. Whenever I felt like sitting and typing I would catch up on the events that had unfolded up to that point. To make it easier to follow, I chose to split this blog post up between the individual days.


Thursday:

This has been a weather week here in Washington. I have made it to and from work so far each day this week. It was mildly challenging, but nothing major. Basically, it was everything that comes with snow when it arrives. Tuesday and Wednesday were both okay. Naturally, I would have preferred to stay home and play in the snow, but chose to go earn money instead. Those kind of days are usually good for two reasons: 1) Traffic is light because so many people freak out and stay home, and 2) New snow is easy to drive in. Fun even!

Today was different. Today we still had all the snow, but in addition had freezing rain that started in the wee hours of the morning.

I woke up this morning at 3:30 like always. I made my sandwich for lunch and sat down at the computer with my coffee. I hadn't been sitting there very long when I heard cracking sounds outside. What was that? I didn't hear anything again until I heard a CRASH on the deck in back. I went hurriedly to the back door and shone a flashlight out. There, across the deck and onto the roof, was half of Suzie's prized red-leaf maple tree. As I stood there looking out I kept hearing cracking noises. I went back to the computer and put some blurbs about it up on Facebook, and I would occasionally hear another crack somewhere out there. I went outside and stood on the deck listening for about 15 minutes. It was still dark, and raining steadily. I could just see the silhouettes of the huge fir trees out back that ring our property. It was strangely quiet--no other sounds like cars, airplanes, wind, or anything. The eerie quiet was punctuated by the constant CRACK or SNAP of big branches, followed by a whooshing sound as they fell down and broke off the lower limbs.

At that point I knew I was not going to work. For the first time ever (that I can recall anyway) I decided to use weather as an excuse for a non-scheduled day off and I called in to work to tell them I was not coming in. Anyone that knows the Auburn-Black Diamond Road (which is our link to the rest of the world) knows that the entire stretch of road has a canopy of trees hovering over it. Based on what I had experienced standing out on the deck, trees everywhere were snapping like twigs. The rain still hadn't let up and there was still a constant cracking going on all around us outside. At about 8 o’clock the power went out.

By the time Sue woke up, her tree had suffered immensely. There had been 4 more breaks on it since the first major one that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Rachyl and Tony had just dropped in and seen the damage when she awoke. As I figured, she was devastated. She wasn't even up for 10 minutes when there was another crack and the only remaining part of the tree, the center, broke off. The tree was no more. By the end of the day we had broken trees all over our yards. Front, back, sides—all suffered casualties. It’s amazing how much ice was frozen to everything. When you see a pine needle that is normally the size of a toothpick wearing so much ice that it’s the size of your finger, you can understand how much weight was involved and why the damage was so widespread. Every tree, bush, or whatever was encased in thick ice. Those that could support it did, and the rest gave up and broke.

Our beautiful back yard looks like a war zone.

We spent the morning out and about in the neighborhood. Me, Suz, Dane, Keith, Tony, and Rachyl were all meandering around back and forth, checking things out. We looked, swapped stories, explored, took pictures, and all kinds of things that people do when they're captive by a weather event. We had a couple hours of fun playing here and there on one of Denny’s quads and my 3-wheeler. When we went out yesterday morning we learned from somebody that the Auburn-Black Diamond Road was closed both directions. When we were out on the bikes only the portion of the road to the left was closed. Lots and lots of trees were down. When we got back to the house I took a look around to see what I could get started cleaning up. Quite a few of the things that fell down were so thick with ice that it was physically hard to lug them around. I managed to make a few cuts with my hit-and-miss chain saw, then I spent an hour or so with the 3-wheeler, pulling limbs to the back of the property with a tie-down. It was raining freezing rain the whole morning.

Dinner consisted of chicken patty sandwiches cooked on the grill so we didn't suffer there. We were really enjoying the warm house our wood stove was providing, and because we were without power we made the decision to keep it going all night long every night during the power outage. Suz was having a hard time sleeping so she stayed on the couch all night so she could toss and turn to her heart's content.


Friday:

I called work yesterday afternoon to tell them I was not coming in today, and I'm glad I did. Shortly after I made that call our cell signals fell to barely a sputter. The land-line phone had already gone away sometime during the day.

We kept the wood fire going all night so we are still toasty warm in here. At one point-maybe 5-ish this morning I got up to put another piece of firewood in and I put a full coffee carafe of water on top of it. By the time I got up a little later we had nice, hot coffee to drink (instant of course) while we enjoyed our warm house. Sue had the radio on for a little while and it was our area that was mentioned over and over. Highway 18 is almost totally closed between Interstate 5 and Interstate 90. Lots of our arterials are closed. If I had decided to go in to work I have no idea how I would have gotten there.

Well, it's a lot nicer looking day than yesterday. There is no drizzle or anything coming down and it's brighter. Time to go outside and clean up some fallen stuff. I spent quite a while clearing away the majority of the tree that had exploded all over our deck and walled us in with branches. After a while of doing that, I was tired and cold and gave up for the day. The rest of the day was spent sitting in my jammies near the wood stove.

Dinner was exceptional, even in its simplicity. It was basically a really great, tender steak cooked on the grill, accompanied by a couple of baked potatoes that were actually cooked inside the wood stove! They came out awesome. Great flavor and done perfectly. I was feeling good.


Saturday:

We were both stir crazy when we got up today. We both had been conserving our water up to this point, but we had finally decided it was shower time. We both enjoyed a nice, warm shower! That’s the beauty of having your water heater in a heated part of a house. It stays warm longer. Almost all of our electronic devices were dead, and we decided to drive around and find a place we could plug our laptops and phones in. I’ll tell you, it’s not easy sometimes! All the King County libraries are open, but none of the wifi is working in any of them. Some kind of a system-wide thing they said. After trying a couple places, we ended up down in the Kent valley. We tried Starbucks in Safeway and a couple other spots. Wifi wasn’t the only issue—there was also the lack of power outlets to plug our laptops into. Finally, we ended up in a Burger King! Haha… I never would have thought of them as a place to hang out during an afternoon.

When we got home most of the family was there. Kevin and his trusty chainsaw (and plenty of help from Dane and Keith) had completely cut up all the fallen trees! We're not talking a small amount of work here either. It had to have been a solid few hours of work to do all they did. That was truly a really great thing that they did.

At around 4pm the signal on our cell phones came alive. We finally had our cell service back! With a full five bars, we were now able to at least converse with the rest of the world. That was a relief.

We finished our evening with pizza. I ran back into civilization and bought me, Dane, and Keith each a pepperoni pizza. It was amazing how fast that entire pizza of Keith's disappeared down his throat!

After we ate, an idea hit me and I went out to the garage. I came back in with the battery that used to reside in my Harley and a couple of wire jumper leads. I hooked my iPhone up to it through the car charger adapter that goes into the cigarette lighter socket. It worked great! Charged both my iPod and my iPhone.


Sunday:

Sue was pretty impressed with my homebrew iPhone charger system that was sitting on my computer desk, and asked me if I was done with it. She wanted to see if she could charge her laptop. We hooked it up and it was working fine! It didn't stay on the charger long though, because shortly afterwards we found ourselves out and about once again. We made the rounds around Covington, all the time I was monitoring my wifi tracking app. I was telling Sue which places we drove past had wifi. Wouldn't you know it--here we are back at Burger King once again! This one is a lot closer to home than yesterday at least.

After we got home I decided to bite the bullet and shave my face. I hadn't done so since Wednesday or so, and if I was going to go to work tomorrow I didn't want to have to do it in the dark. It was no fun but not bad. It was the cold wash afterwards that was almost unbearable. We have COLD cold water at our house.

At about 5:30pm I was outside the back door, tending to fries and burgers I was cooking on the grill (yes, when you have no power you can cook lots of things on the grill--fries included), when I hear a WOOHOO from out in front of the house somewhere. I looked up and it took me a second to realize I was looking at lights shining at me from the garage. The power was back on!

Time to get back to our normal, ordinary, predictable lives.