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last thursday, tim messaged me online while we were at work, and pasted a weather alert for seattle forcasting record wind & rain for thursday night. we both laughed it off, discounting the significance of the weather alert and thinking.. it couldn't be that bad yeh? less than 24 hrs later, "The region’s worst windstorm in more than a decade struck on Thursday, knocking out power to more than 1.5 million homes and businesses. Wind gusted to 113 mph during the storm near Mount Rainier and to a record 69 mph at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport." friday morning, we woke up on with no electricity. 80% of the eastside was out of power. the roads were chaotic, traffic lights were out, debris scattered everywhere & every few blocks there were trees fallen across the road, blocking traffic and bringing down power lines. 
outside our apt: a fallen tree blocking the road and bringing down power lines
microsoft campus was closed and since my apt is in downtown bellevue, me & frances layered up in our winter wear and ventured out to the retail district to examine the chaos and destruction brought by the storm. it was like a scene from a doomsday movie. the roads were gridlocked with cars, there was debris everywhere, the supermarkets were packed with ppl buying anything they could find left on the shelves. we searched for a warm lunch but found nearly all resturaunts were closed because they had no power. we finally found 2-3 blocks on the outskirts of downtown bellevue that still had power but the resturaunts all had several hour wait times for a table. we finally settled for this small packed mexican resturaunt, waiting a good 1.5 hrs to get our warm burritos and nachos. during that 1.5 hr wait, we saw the resturaunt close their doors because they had completely run out of food. 
eating a hot mexican lunch at one of the few resturaunts opened for business
our power came back saturday morning which made us one of the very lucky ones. even today, 5 days after the storm hit, there are still 150,000 homes without power. considering nights in seattle are typically a few degrees below freezing point, our hearts go out to those who are still without power. its been great though to see how the community has responded to the crisis, with ppl with power opening their homes & providing shelter, warm meals and hot showers to family & friends without power. some images from msnbc news available here |
