Thursday the weather people predicted a wind storm. Okay, fine. They are hyping it up. They always do, get people scared, give them a reason to go to the grocery store. This time, they were not hyping it up. This time, it was horrible. At first, I thought it was hype, the severe wind alert was only on till 10pm. 10 pm, we just had a little breeze. No huge gusts. By 11pm, we were having sustained winds over 40 and gusts up to 70. By midnight our power was gone along with a million other people. We woke up Friday COLD. No power. No heat. BRRR. But is was not too bad.
I am so thankful that this tree stayed put! Whew!
We had fun on Friday! Mark tried to go to work. The police in Kirkland turned him around still too many trees down. Power poles were also a big problem. Those came down, lots of those came down. We had an adventure on Friday.
We went for a walk. There were a bunch of trees down. Big trees. Roofs were damaged, some places big parts of roofs were just gone. This is a picture of the water overflowing from Juanita Creek. It got backed up with trees, and the force of the wind and rain pushed the water all the way down the street. The water went down three blocks, it carried rocks the size of my hand. There were yards washed away.
These were kids out trying to dam the water. I explained to them that was a really dumb idea, having water back up into that house would not please the people who lived there!
All day Friday we played with Lon. Cooked on the grill. I could not figure out why Lon would not take a nap. Then, I got it. His milk was COLD. So I put a cast iron pot on the grill, filled it with water! Once the water was warm, I heated up Lon's bottle. Three drinks and he was OUT for over an hour. And Mommy got coffee!
Lon was dressed in his onesie, his jammies, a shirt, a sweater, and his fleece coat, sweat pants, socks (several) and shoes. Round sandwiches are still good without power! (since I make them and they are peanut butter and nutella it was easy)
We had a radio, so we could listen to music and try to find some news. When we woke up on Saturday there was still no power. darn it. At this point we did not realize how much damage there was in the area. We had only seen our neighborhood and just heard, the power is still out in most places on the Eastside. It was REALLY cold in the house now. 43 degrees! To me, inside that is cold. Poor Lon, the only time he was cold was during diaper changes.
He walked around in his holy cow blanket for a while. He thought this was grand fun.
My friend Dan came over Saturday morning. He gave me grief about not being more prepared, like having a working phone and wood. He brought us over some wood in his Swedish Volvo.
This thing is cool. It can go anywhere. The best part for us, is that is holds lots of wood! Seats five adults in the middle, gear or wood in the back, and two people up front.
It was so nice to see Dan. I will get a cheap plug in phone that we can use when our roam phones don't work. The cell sites were without power so we could not use our cells.
I promise to remember I am from Alaska, not Redmond and I will be better prepared (wood, etc) for the next time we have a big storm. Probably another 5 years from now.
Saturday night at 8:19 our power came back! Yeah! It was great! Lon was already asleep. I turned the heat on. I did not turn on the Christmas Lights. We did not want to strain the grid.
We saw news photos of the rest of the area. We are truly lucky. There are people still without power. It is Monday. They are saying they are going to try to get everyone power by Christmas. It was truly an amazing storm.
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