West Seattle Weather Watch: Official briefing; wind advisory
Just found this on the National Weather Service’s Seattle website – they’ve put up the PowerPoint presentation from the official “hazardous weather briefing” delivered a bit earlier today. See it here. (Still awaiting updated forecasts — should be out any time now — but that “briefing” indicates the rain won’t be quite so bad here in the metro area, half-inch to an inch by tomorrow afternoon.) 3:48 PM UPDATE: The updated forecasts and advisories are coming online now – a wind advisory is in effect starting at 10 pm (read about it here), for starters, and it says 45 mph gusts are possible.
West Seattle Weather Watch: No major trouble so far
In the “no news is good news” vein, we did want to let you know that so far we haven’t heard of any major problems around West Seattle, though the rain is steady and the night is young. If you have to go out, don’t just drive carefully, also walk carefully, since so many wet slippery leaves are on sidewalks, parking strips, gutters, etc. All of King County remains under an “urban and small stream flood advisory” from the National Weather Service till early tomorrow morning; that’s detailed here. Meantime, the county has activated its Flood Warning Center because of some river trouble – you can watch for alerts on that and other regional emergency-related news at rpin.org. We’ll keep watch on into the night and starting early for the morning commute too, since that’s when these kind of conditions can lead to the most trouble.
West Seattle Weather Watch: City crews ready for anything
Serious rain off and on so far today — forecast has updated with an alert of “heavy rainfall possible tonight through Friday morning” — and the city’s already in “urban flood response” mode, according to an alert from Seattle Public Utilities. We talked with spokesperson Andy Ryan, who says SPU is keeping close watch on known trouble spots around the city, including parts of North Delridge (who can forget what happened 11 months ago); WSB’er Chris, in fact, tweeted that he was “delighted to see the utility crew cleaning up/checking on the Delridge onramp at 5:45 this morning” and suggests we remind everyone that the Drainage Emergency Hotline is 206-386-1800. (At left, the view through the window, er, windshield, of the WSB Mobile Office. Anyone recognize the backdrop?)
West Seattle Weather Watch: Check those drains, again
(photo added Tuesday morning — Wally said he had a mossed-over roof gutter and we asked for a pic!)
The forecast summaries don’t look too apocalyptic but Wally sent a note pointing us to the forecast “discussion” for Thursday-Friday – the possibility of heavy rain and breezy weather resulted in this note from the National Weather Service:
COULD ALSO SEE SOME LOCALLY HEAVY ACCUMULATIONS OVER THE LOWLANDS…FALL LEAVES CLOGGING DRAINS COULD EXACERBATE THE PROBLEM…SO THE SWING SHIFT SENT A SPS HIGH-LIGHTING THE POTENTIAL FOR MOUNTAIN AND LOWLAND LEAF CLOGGED DRAIN FLOODING.
Bottom line, check those drains again in the next day or two – those colorful leaves are beautiful but once they’re down, they can cause big trouble if they wind up blocking your drains, private and public property.
West Seattle Weather Watch: All’s well so far
Seriously breezy but not catastrophically windy; no major problems reported overnight or currently. The National Weather Service‘s morning “forecast discussion” says this system is moving through “as advertised” and things should quiet down later this morning, with the next notable development some colder air on Thursday with daytime highs as low as the upper 40s. 7:43 AM UPDATE: In comments, Hopey notes a Fauntleroy/Arbor Heights Comcast service outage. We’ll update if we can find out more about its status.
West Seattle weekend scenes: CROP Walk; price cut; rare arc
Last year, we caught up with the Seattle CROP Walk-ers as they strolled around Alki Point on a gray afternoon; for the ’08 Seattle CROP Walk today, the weather’s the same, but we found them heading east along Alki Beach instead, including the group shown above. The 3-mile walk raised money to fight hunger, with beneficiaries including the West Seattle Food Bank, the White Center Food Bank, and Northwest Harvest. Meantime, this may be a sign you could have a few more pennies in your pocket soon:
That’s the first sighting of $3.40-something gas in West Seattle this fall, found at Gasco (35th/Henderson). We believe it’s the lowest posted West Seattle gas price as of this moment, since the usual lowest-price spot, Arco, was at $3.53 when we drove by a bit earlier. Last but not least in this trio of WS Weekend Scenes, we wanted to share this photo by Steve Heck – click it to open a full-size version:
Steve’s wife Michelle Heck sent the photo with the explanation that it’s a “circumhorizontal arc,” photographed over Alki, looking southwest, Saturday morning.
West Seattle scene: Another “amazing sunset”
“Amazing” is how Shauna described it as she sent us her pix of tonight’s sunset, taken from Alki. In a note earlier, JD explained that the sunset colors are due in large part to smoke from three big fires burning in Oregon, and weather conditions (southerly flow) bringing it this way. ADDED 9:35 PM: Another view from Alki, courtesy of Scott C:
West Seattle scenes: Monday night miscellany
A week or so ago, we spotted the predecessor to that sign at West Seattle Nursery – it simply said “Under New Management,” which brought us a couple of notes from folks who wanted to know if that meant the nursery had been sold. Never got to check in person, but this amusing new sign appears to be proof it hasn’t. Meantime, a sign in The Junction proclaims a new development’s name; exactly one month after the teardown of an old house at 41st/Edmunds, south of Jefferson Square, a sign in front of the steeply sloped lot declares the future cluster “The Incline on Edmunds”:
The web address on the sign, by the way, takes you to a page with (currently) only renderings of the future definitely-not-cookie-cutter townhomes. Last but by no means least, tonight’s the official full moon; on the other side of the moonrise we shot last night, Scott C sent us this photo of the moonset early this morning:
Can’t guarantee a similar sight Tuesday morning, but the moon’s high in a cloudless sky right now, so if you’re up early, look toward the Olympics, just in case.
West Seattle Weather Watch: Check those drains!
It may sound like one of those “don’t run with scissors” reminders – but in case you just aren’t accustomed to thinking about your drains this early in the year, a couple West Seattleites suggested a reminder here. And not just because of the storm — in fact, it was hours before yesterday’s deluge when we got a note from Paul suggesting some seasonal reminders including clearing your storm drain. Then, shortly after the cloudburst, Nancy from North Delridge sent the photo you see above, with the note:
Noticed the drain in the attached photo during the adopt-a-street (cleanup) Saturday.
I got home from unclogging it just a few minutes before the current deluge.
It’s not too early to start keeping on eye on neighborhood drains.
Seattle Public Utilities offers a few tips here; chief among them, planning a weekly check of drains and downspouts. Last year, SPU even offered supplies for an “adopt-a-drain” program, to encourage people to help with the drains on neighborhood streets; we’ll be checking to see if that’s in the works again this year. And if yesterday wasn’t enough of a reminder about what the weather can do, revisit the December 2007 flooding coverage!
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