54 Replies to "PHOTOS: Weather-enhanced king tide swamps West Seattle shores"

• Ryan Caple December 27, 2022 (9:52 am)

  

• Gill & Alex December 27, 2022 (9:59 am)

  Very impressive high tide. Luckily, the wind held off. Thanks for the photos.

• Ryan Caple December 27, 2022 (9:59 am)

  

• wsperson December 27, 2022 (10:46 am)

  is this the highest it’s ever been? I’ve never seen it higher than this

  • WSB December 27, 2022 (10:53 am)

    We had another event like this sometime in the past few years – I haven’t had the time to look it up yet.

    • James December 27, 2022 (6:25 pm)

      It smashed the all-time record by about 6 inches; also the first time we’ve ever hit 15ft MLLW.

• sam-c December 27, 2022 (11:07 am)

  WOW!

• waikikigirl December 27, 2022 (11:26 am)

  Did that submerged and not submerged boat get towed away from the boat ramp or still there but not viewable in the pic above?

• Scubafrog December 27, 2022 (11:49 am)

  My goodness.   Glacial melt is real.  Global warming is real.  I’m ready to volunteer and do what I can on Alki after the water subsides.  Wow…

• Math Teacher December 27, 2022 (12:28 pm)

  King tide (forecast based on orbit of Earth and Moon) PLUS rivers currently at high volumes due to recent “atmospheric rivers” PLUS very low pressure (980 mb is same as typically seen with level 1 hurricanes), all combined to create record high water.Global warming and sea level rise is real, as can be seen here:That graph shows that high water events that used to occur in Seattle about once every 100 years can now occur about once every 10 years. 

  • Bridget December 27, 2022 (1:15 pm)

    Wow! Thank you

  • Ian Crozier December 29, 2022 (8:34 am)

    Great chart! Could you share a link to the source?

• Jort December 27, 2022 (1:22 pm)

  Good thing we opened the bridge as soon as possible so everybody could keep driving their cars to Costco. Cars are the number one source of carbon emissions in Seattle. This is the legacy we will leave our children and grandchildren: ever-rising seas, just a little bit more, each and every winter, bit by bit, all because we insisted on never admitting our failures in designing our transportation system to serve the worst excesses of individualism. Enjoy your Costco run today. You are literally responsible for this. What a beautiful gift to give the next generation: a destroyed planet paved with millions of miles of roads. Congratulations. Enjoy the cheap rotisserie chicken.

  • 98126res December 27, 2022 (2:06 pm)

    Sorry you feel so strongly but pls be more positive as so many people are doing the best they can for their families, managing constant change and inflation so high. Costco helps keep bills down. For sure no one is perfect, but God bless us all.

    • Brandon December 28, 2022 (6:04 am)

      Doing your best at running this planet into nothing? Good job?

  • Scubafrog December 27, 2022 (2:22 pm)

    There’s a pretty big gulf re responsibility  when it comes to big oil——-> the consumer.  Including the lobbyists, heritage foundation’s “scientists”, the govt. So many people who’ve known better for decades, have exploited the globe.  Blaming the consumer/driver’s low-hanging fruit at this late stage.   BTW, you can walk/bicycle to Costco, but how do you think your food items got there?  Unless you grow/fertilise your own food (all of it), you’re tossing a lot of big rocks in a small glass house when you point fingers for global warming.

  • WS Guy December 27, 2022 (2:36 pm)

    Don’t blame me.  I was in my pod eating Holiday bug dinner.

  • Frizzle December 27, 2022 (2:43 pm)

    Not sure what rotisserie chicken from Costco has to do with a high tide, and I’m sure you’ve been in a car at some point in your life…so you are just as responsible as the next person.

  • WS resident December 27, 2022 (7:02 pm)

    Jort, what’s up with the passive agressive tone blaming everyone? Most folks I know are just trying to survive whichever way they know, while doing their best to reduce their carbon footprint. People that are now using the bridge again were spending 2x to 3x more time driving the past few years, which means their carboon footprint decreased as the bridge reopened and their commute and travel times decreased. 

    • Kathy December 27, 2022 (10:27 pm)

      Well, the whole family could bike a few miles to Costco. Oh wait, the low bridge is broken so now it’s more like 10 miles. And the city has refused for years to put bike lanes on 4th Avenue in SoDo. Otherwise it would be much healthier to bike there vs. driving. For the biker & the planet.

      • WS Resident December 28, 2022 (8:42 am)

        We have a very long way to go… for as advanced as we are as a city (and nation), there are really some underdeveloped infrastructure here that continues to plague us all.

  • Jort’s high horse December 28, 2022 (7:33 am)

    Jort, 12 out of 126 busses in the past approximate 3 weeks. Public and passive transit does not serve all the needs for many families on a typical day, much less with unpredictable bus and water routes. Instead of constantly railing on West Seattleites who are struggling to raise conscientious and mentally and physically healthy families, why don’t you turn your ire on the system and rail on King County instead? And give the rest of us one less thing to get under our skin. 

  • AC December 28, 2022 (8:10 am)

    It’s a proven fact that corporations are responsible for the vast majority of pollution and global warming. Blaming individuals for trying to survive in cities built *not* to be walkable is nonsense. Instead of shaming others for how they survive this late-stage capitalist hellscape, lobby to get rid of Amazon and other companies that are ruining the earth. Right now, you’re just being condescending, and that doesn’t help anyone but you. 

    • Jort December 28, 2022 (11:24 am)

      Remind me of when Amazon, and not my fellow neighborhood citizens, showed up to public meetings to block bike lanes, the light rail, and denser housing? It’s easier to blame “Amazon” for everything, but trust me, Amazon doesn’t vote. The citizens of Seattle vote, and they vote for the status quo and preserving their property values above all other concerns, including the impact their preferences have on the death of this planet. 

      • Joe December 29, 2022 (3:24 am)

        Amazon votes and lobbies…

        • OneTimeCharley December 29, 2022 (8:06 am)

          If we did every single thing on Jort’s wish list, would humans emit less carbon into the atmosphere? Yes, I think we would indeed emit less carbon here, but somewhere else in the world would increase as the production of goods, infrastructure building, service industries, energy production/consumption and population all surged in that locale, to meet global demand. The areas that endeavor this type of production will prosper, while the areas that eschew them will gray and fade. Amsterdam’s bicycle-centric urban design is great for them, and is a great aspirational model, but don’t ever forget that their transition is paid for by the nearly century’s worth of fossil fuels that their society benefited from, as hydrocarbons were pumped out from under the North Sea decade after decade. That carbon went in the atmosphere, whether over the Netherlands, Norway or Nigeria. We should be angry at population growth. We should be angry that our foreign aid is always tied to NOT  including reproductive education or free and widely available prophylactics. We should be angry that we haven’t all benefited equally from the sacrifices that have been made; sociologically, environmentally, spiritually. We should seek far less damaging forms of energy (and we are), but to rail against infrastructure and forms of transportation that were built in order to increase our collective economic fortune, is misguided at best. It turns out that increasing production and transport of said products means that greater efficiencies and economies of scale can be achieved. Sorry Jort. Macroeconomics is not your friend on this one. We can do better, but your particular vision for the future only works in economic microcosms. Renewable, non-carbon based energy paired with serious encouragement of negative population growth yields the changes you yearn for. Come on Helion!

• Kersti Elisabeth Muul December 27, 2022 (1:35 pm)

  

• Math Teacher December 27, 2022 (1:58 pm)

  But Jort, the “carbon footprint” concept is a tool of Big Oil – literally created by BP – intended to push responsibility away from the corporations and onto the tiny choices made by individual consumers. 

  • wsperson December 27, 2022 (2:14 pm)

    we can change what big corporations do with our choices, if enough of us choose to do so

  • Ivan Weiss December 27, 2022 (3:12 pm)

    It’s not even worth the effort to engage with him anymore. He’s at the “the 2020 election was stolen” level, and there he’ll stay, come what may.

    • Jort December 27, 2022 (4:13 pm)

      Cars are the biggest source of carbon emissions in this city, which is a fact, whether that’s frustrating or not. As is so often the case in these comment sections, people would rather talk about me, personally, as “Jort,” than discuss the relevant arguments. Do we want our legacy as a society to reflect our sincere recognition of our planet-destroying societal transportation planning resulting into something more sustainable, or do we want to tell our grandchildren, “I really told off that Jort guy! Man, Jort was sooooo annoying!” No country on planet earth has solved the geometric paradox of car ownership in dense cities, and I assure you Seattle will not be first. Take it to the bank. Or just call me names or whatever. Next year, when the waters are even higher and we are all another year closer to the inevitable destruction, I look forward to being told how stupid I am, yet again, even though I have been and continue to base my arguments in the uncomfortable facts and realities that we are seeing right in front of our eyes, every day and every year. You can defend our broken driving system all you want. It’s your grandchildren and their grandchildren who will speak our generation’s name in shame for being so confidently, willfully incorrect even when they should have known better and still had the time to do something about it. But, instead: time to gas up that big ‘ole truck! Vrooooom. Vroooom! Jort sucks! He’s so crraaZY!!!

      • AC December 28, 2022 (8:19 am)

        No, we’re engaging with you because your take is a bad one. Let me guess, you haven’t done the work to engage the fact that cities were designed intentionally by white folks who could afford vehicles, to keep poor and POC out of their spaces. Our cities were set up this way on purpose, because of white supremacy and classism. No one is disagreeing that global warming is a problem. We disagree with you blaming individuals and being condescending. Your opinion is short-sighted and ill-researched. Come back when you have something of substance to say, instead of dodging accountability and valid critiques of your argument with weird asides about yourself. 

        • Jort December 28, 2022 (11:21 am)

          You must not be very familiar with my writings if you think I’m unaware of these obvious and unambiguous causal factors. Where we disagree is the need to be condescending to people who will claim to “care about the environment” and the salmon and the orcas and the recycling sorting, etc., but will also show up to Sound Transit public meetings demanding gondolas or outright cancelation of the light rail line, or who will demand single family zoning in the city forever and all time, or who will demand that the city provide free parking for every member of their family wherever they want to go forever, or who will demand that buses stay out of their neighborhood, or who want to drive as fast as “feels prudent to them” on any city street, or who screech endlessly about the existential threat that a painted bike lane poses, or who oppose the removal of a pedestrian overpass for “historical aesthetic purposes,” or who vote against transit funding, or who say pedestrians should have fewer, not more, crossings, or who claim that business in the West Seattle Junction are doomed without offering ample free parking, or who will pay for endless legal challenges to modest development proposals for multi family housing… I mean, honestly, I could go on for hours, and, yeah, I feel like “condescending” is a reasonable response to people in these situations. An important distinction, where you are dead wrong, is that our cities were not “set up this way on purpose,” they were set up around streetcars and pedestrians, then altered and adapted to accommodate single family homes and automobiles. But, yes, they were adapted to vehicles because of classism and the cult of American individualism. And so long as people think getting a rotiserrie chicken from Costco in 10 minutes is more important than saving the planet, then yeah, I’m going to criticize their individual behaviors, since they’re adding up to a societal failure. Just because this is the way our cities are, right now, doesn’t mean we’re obligated to perpetuate this broken system forever. We can change it, just like other cities all around the world have done. But what will have to change is individual behaviors, driven by societal benefit. And that’s going to mean changes. And I will happily, gladly, readily and quickly point out the hypocrisy of “In this House” liberals in Seattle who care more about the status quo, their property values and the convenience of driving than they do about the future of the one planet we have the option of living upon. 

      • WW Resident December 28, 2022 (8:30 am)

        Hey I finally agree with Jort. At least their last sentence

      • GMGD December 28, 2022 (1:02 pm)

        Jort, read this.  Then think about it.  Your community us telling you something important about your approach.https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/06/moral-virtue-signaling-vegans/661353/

        • Jort December 28, 2022 (3:57 pm)

          I’m sorry you’re annoyed. If it bugs you, maybe check out the images at the top of this post. In a few years, people will laugh about how trivial these floodwaters seem. We can worry about how “annoying” it is to have this pointed out, or we can confront it and demand change. If having your feelings hurt by “Jort” is more important to you than taking tangible action to save the planet, then I don’t know what to tell you. You have the power to change Seattle. Or you can keep insisting that driving your car is more important than anything else. Meanwhile, the waters are rising. Your recycling sorting isn’t fixing it. What’s the plan? Get angry at “Jort”? That’s not going to fix it either. 

        • Jessa December 29, 2022 (12:03 am)

          “Mothership Earth” will survive after we’ve wiped ourselves out, so it’s really humans you’re trying to save. As for me, I’m going to be angry with King County for not being able to resolve the current bus crisis more expeditiously or creatively. My ‘carpool’ removed 4 cars off the roads, twice per day, five days a week. Metro has not been a good partner for going on a month now and with no end in sight (12 busses of 126 fixed in 3 weeks is lousy). You’re too alarmist and extreme Jort, and real solutions need to be regional, not city by city. 

      • Graciano December 29, 2022 (7:19 am)

        https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2022/07/13/king-tides-are-back-offering-glimpse-into-future-with-higher-seas/

• Rick December 27, 2022 (4:45 pm)

  Yeah, Trump caused the tides to rise and the Duwwamish to flood South Park. What an amazing guy.

• morealex December 27, 2022 (7:04 pm)

  Wow! I’ve heard of the king tides of course, but this is the first time I’ve seen pictures like this. Glad it stopped where it did.

• morealex December 27, 2022 (7:10 pm)

  Also, when is it supposed to recede? Might be a good time to do some beachcombing then.

• Andy December 27, 2022 (9:58 pm)

  We have been on Beach Drive for 25 years and the water comes up in our yard during the “king tides”.  It is very easy to acurrately measure and compare the heights of the tides.  This tide was high but we have had 3-4 high tides over the last 25 years that have been equally high.

  • Math Teacher December 28, 2022 (10:51 am)

    NOAA “accurately measures and compares the heights of the tides.”  Like here, perhaps?: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/datums.html?datum=MLLW&units=0&epoch=0&id=9447130&name=Seattle&state=WA

    Sure looks like a new record to me. 

    I agree that several tides over the past 25 years have pushed more or similar water onto Beach Drive yards and houses, but that has typically involved water pushed inland by high winds occurring along with the high tide. 

  • Audrey December 28, 2022 (11:13 am)

    I think this was higher than I’ve ever seen… without wind and waves. The last really high one also had waves. 

• Jennifer Hall December 28, 2022 (12:40 pm)

  Seems like a good idea to build community as much as possible, and to have neighborhood disaster plans, so that we can help each other through tough times.  It’s also a good idea to reflect on what we can do as individuals and groups to mitigate against the planet death threats of white supremacy, inclusive of climate change and toxic capitalism.  Keep on truckin’, Jort.  Only in the figurative sense, of course. If it makes you feel any better, some of us older disabled folx who cannot ride bikes (and haul bike trailers) in traffic any more, now only drive well-used EV’s to Costco, and only do that every couple of months or so, when we’ve run out of vegan black bean burgers.

• Pamela December 28, 2022 (5:16 pm)

  Hi. Curious about this tug that showed up around 10ish after the highest tide. Puget was pulling a couple dozen logs off Alki. Harvesting free logs that would be the property of the city once washed ashore? Or doing nautical safety measure for the ferry’s. 

• phil dirt December 29, 2022 (7:49 am)

  I live on Genesee Hill,  and I’m looking forward to having waterfront property. I will buy a yacht, wind powered, of course, and sail to Costco instead of having to take the bus. 

• Scarlett December 29, 2022 (8:34 am)

  This individual “Jort” doesn’t need me to defend him/her – and may not want me to – but I have to say that the overreaction to his comments smells a little fabricated and perhaps a little “score settling.”  Whatever one’s opinions on climate change, does anyone think that he is advocating that the disabled ditch their cars and climb on bicycles to get around town?  This is childish junior high school stuff.   

  • Al King December 29, 2022 (3:16 pm)

    Scarlett. You don’t find his/her comments “fabricated”? Why do you believe anyone calling them out is “score settling”.

• Jessea December 29, 2022 (9:24 am)

  Hi All,Out of town and wondering out the South end of Alki- Emma park and La Rustica- has there been flooding over there? Thanks for the help if you can

  • WSB December 29, 2022 (12:09 pm)

    The water did not get all the way up to Beach Drive, though Constellation Park got its usual wind-fueled wave spray.

    • Al King December 29, 2022 (1:46 pm)

      WSB. Can you check with parks and ask if they have any plans to clear all the log debris of the sand along Alki Ave?  There’s a LOT of large log debris that i doubt will get washed out by normal high tides.

      • WSB December 29, 2022 (1:55 pm)

        Already inquiring after noting a giant pile over at Don Armeni.

        • Jessea December 30, 2022 (7:56 am)

          Thank you WSB and Al King, I am so grateful your help and info. I will keep checking back in too in case I can help with the debris when I return.

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