The biggest storm since Inaugural Day....

Sheesh. Seattle's been getting some crazy extreme weather lately. This week has seen some unusually strong winds and precipitation...but I didn't realize until today that we were getting one of the biggest wind storms since "Inaugural Day" (apparently, some crazy storm hit the Puget Sound on Clinton's Inauguration back in '93). Sure enough, by around 3pm, a ton of my co-workers had left for the day to deal with traffic and avoid any bad weather. I held out until 6pm when the office lights started flickering and news of the 520 bridge potentially closing as early as 9pm. I immediately hit the back roads, which was actually a stupid idea because everyone and their mother was taking the back roads. After 30 min. and only 20 blocks, I decided to just jump on the highway. Sure enough, the highway wasn't as bad as I expected (since everyone was taking the back roads)--within another 30 min., I was back safely at home. I know others didn't fare as well...and I definitely ran across a few larger-than-I-would-have-liked puddles of water on the roads on my way back.

But check out this Incident Report on the local news. (and another) It sounds like pure chaos over here:
- the 520 bridge is now totally closed (what I take everyday to work)
- some dive team had to rescue a woman was found underwater in her house (who later died)
- firefighters had to rescue some folks on Mercer St., below Aurora Ave., because their cars were completely submerged in water
- five landslides have been reported in various parts of Seattle
- 2 people have died from falling trees

It's kinda hard to sleep with the wind just banging against the building. It's 12:49am right now and the heavy/bulk of the storm is supposed to hit after 1am. Let's see if I wake up with any electricity!


Cars submerged on Mercer Ave.