Tag Archives: weather

So much rain in Seattle, council land use committee changes focus to floodplain legislation

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(Image: CHS)

This week’s storms that have caused flooding across the region outside Seattle are also having an impact inside City Hall.

The Seattle City Council’s land use committee Wednesday will set aside its planned agenda for action to extend a set of interim regulations in the city that will allow property owners to rely on updated National Flood Insurance Rate Maps to obtain flood insurance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Flood Insurance Program.

The Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections has been working on new legislation to come before the council to permanently update Seattle’s Floodplain Development regulations. Continue reading →

Heavy rain and winds on Capitol Hill as storm brings flooding outside Seattle

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So far, the Green River levee breaks haven’t reached Led Zeppelin scale but Western Washington is set for a stormy few days of wind and heavy rain.

On Capitol Hill, the issues so far have been minor urban flooding and possible power outages as the area remains under wind advisory until 10 PM Monday and then is forecasted for another windstorm starting Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service’s Seattle office says:

A period of very active weather will dominate the week
ahead as a series of strong frontal systems produce cascading impacts across Western Washington. In addition to ongoing river flood concerns, periods of windy conditions are expected today and again Tuesday night into Wednesday. Snow levels will tumble to the passes Tuesday night and Wednesday with heavy snowfall expected in the mountains. Cool, unsettled conditions will remain in place
through the remainder of the week with substantial additional snowfall in the mountains.

The area will remain under a flood watch through Thursday. Outside the city, areas around Tukwila and Renton were the latest to be threatened by rising waters as the Green River levee was reported breached Monday afternoon prompting an evacuation of the heavily populated, and densely developed commercial areas that includes a hospital and two schools.

In addition to gutters overflowing and wind, Capitol Hill-area trees are also in for a rough few days with soaked soil and heavy limbs.

 

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Transformer explosion and outages as windy rain soaks Capitol Hill — UPDATE

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(Image: Alex Garland/CHS)

View latest outage updates here

So far, the power outage has remained limited after electrical equipment exploded and caught fire at E Aloha and Harvard Ave Saturday night.

Seattle Fire was called to Aloha and Harvard around 7:10 PM to the reported transformer fire.

Seattle City Light reported more than 700 customers without power including swaths of Broadway north or Roy.

Blustery winds and bursts of heavy rain were forecasted to continue through the night.

UPDATE 9:38 PM: City Light says another more than 6,000 customers are now without power in the Capitol Hill core. Continue reading →

Seattle 2025 smoke season: ‘moderate’ and hopefully short

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Source: Airfire.org

Seattle appears set to get through with a relatively mild 2025 smoke season.

Smoke from large fires burning in the eastern Cascades that poured into the Puget Sound region over the weekend should let up, U.S. Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program forecasters say, as an inversion layer fades and winds shift. Continue reading →

Rare ‘severe thunderstorm’ warning part of unusual Seattle spring forecast — UPDATE

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(Image: National Weather Service)

The weird weather in Seattle this week is about to get even weirder. National Weather Service forecasters say be ready for possible severe thunderstorms with wind and hail by Wednesday night around the Puget Sound.

“We have an unusual risk of severe thunderstorms Wednesday, primarily in the late afternoon through the evening,” the NWS alert reads. “The primary hazards we are concerned about are: ⛈️ Hail in excess of 1″ diameter 🍃 Wind gusts in excess of 58mph 🌪️ Possible isolated tornado.” Continue reading →

Overnight winds knock out power to more than 10K across Capitol Hill’s north — UPDATE

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A big tree came down at 18th and Prospect (Image:CHS)

More than 10,000 customers were reported out across Capitol Hill’s north and eastern flank — Seattle City Light Outage Map

More than 10,000 customers across Eastlake, North Capitol Hill, Montlake, and Madison Park were without power early Tuesday after a burst of overnight wind with gusts hitting 60 MPH knocked down rain-soaked trees, branches, and power lines across Seattle and the region.

Across the city, there were more than 34,000 without power as Seattle waited for sunrise with the largest concentrations of outages to the city’s north. At their peak, outages climbed above 37,000 early on the morning.

Seattle City Light has reported an estimated noon restoration for the major outage around Capitol Hill’s north on the busy morning with winds still whipping through the region.

SCL is warning people to be cautious around downed wires. “Downed power lines are extremely dangerous,” a bulletin reads. “Never touch a downed wire or anything that may be in contact with it. Stay at least 30 ft. back and call 911 immediately.”

Many streets in the area are littered with branches and debris. A tree was reported down and blocking at E Roy and Harvard. With many streets darkened and stoplights out, drivers are reminded to treat intersections as four-way stops.

A large tree was also reported down onto vehicles and blocking near 18th and Prospect with another on E Lynn St between 19th Ave E and 20th Ave E. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Hair ice: beautiful proof it is a wonderful chilly day between the 45th and 55th parallel

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Some Washington State hair ice (Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

Have you ever encountered something that you have no explanation for? Maybe it’s the way someone is behaving towards you. Possibly, an object out of place that you swear was just here. Or, it’s a nature encounter that leaves you unsure of what you’ve just seen.

That’s how I felt on a morning walk in the forest outside Marblemount, Washington several years ago. The night before had been quite cold, and as I crept through the riverine forest of alder and cottonwood lining the Skagit River, leaves crackled underfoot. Like any forest, dead branches were strewn about, jettisoned by a combination of decay and force. And then something caught my eye: curling out of several branches about me, was something that looked like hair. I stopped and looked closer. I gently touched one of them and it was cold and melted against my warm fingers. Maybe this was just a weird ice formation – but why was it only on these dead branches?

Without sounding conceited, I am very confident in my naturalist abilities. I am good at identifying plants and animals and I can develop a good working theory on most animal behavior I witness. Rarely does an encounter on or near my home ground stump me. But here I was looking at this thing protruding from rotting sticks that I had never seen before. So, like any good naturalist, I took some photos and notes, and trotted off to try to figure out what it was on the internet.

As it turns out, I was not alone in surprise and uncertainty when encountering hair ice.

In 1918 a German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, formally described this enigma, and suggested that it was not just a new ice formation, but that it could be related to fungus undoubtedly lurking in the damp, decaying sticks he found it protruding from. Wegener is now noted for his theory of continental drift, but he was also a polar explorer who knew a thing or two about ice and he was pretty sure he wasn’t looking at only frozen water.

It took almost 100 years for anyone to reveal more of this. Wegener froze to death in an ill-fated expedition to Greenland in 1930 and offered no more on the subject. But researchers blessed with more advanced tools were able to discern and confirm what Wegner had deduced. Fungus was key to the formation of hair ice. Continue reading →

A second Seattle ‘snow day’ on Capitol Hill

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You know the drill. Capitol Hill’s second Seattle “snow day” will be a slightly snowier, slushier, sloppier affair. Many of the useful links for checking on the state of things from Day One apply.

Capitol Hill Station

Seattle Public Schools again led the way with campuses closed and kids on a remote schedule.

Capitol Hill woke Thursday to between two to three inches of snow. A bit more will fall through the day with showers subsiding into the weekend. Temperatures hovering around freezing and just above will keep things slippery and make street crossings especially messy. Continue reading →

SNOWBRUARY? Not quite, but Capitol Hill forecast calls for wintry mix of cold, rain, and snow

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Photo of a Broadway street sign covered in snow from February, 2019This will probably not be a SNOWBRUARY storm but forecasts predict Capitol Hill is likely to see some snowfall over the coming weekend — and week ahead.

Here is what our federal friends at the National Weather Service have to say about the uncertain conditions around a possibly snowy Seattle:

Looking at the variables, first the positive variables for snow. Temperatures aloft are cold enough, model 850 mb temperatures -6 to -9C through the weekend, 1000-850 mb thickness values drop below 1300 meters late tonight and remain below 1300 meters through Sunday as well. The negative variables for snow, surface gradients remain onshore and 925 mb winds are also southerly. Even with the cold air aloft these two variables are snow killers. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Why mixed-species flocks enjoy communal winter meals on Capitol Hill

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A Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula), a less gregarious winter migrant to the hill. They are often found in mixed-species flocks but are outnumbered, at least 10-1, by Golden-crowned Kinglets. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Everywhere I looked there were birds. Sprites in perpetual motion, determined to find their next meal. Kinglets, chickadees, creepers, nuthatches, and wrens worked through the forest understory as I sat watching. It hardly felt like they noticed me. If I kept still enough, I’d just melt into the background, or at least that’s how it feels when you encounter a winter feeding flock.

Back in October I started noticing mixed-species flocks of chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets, and a few Pacific Wrens around my yard. This is my personal cue for the changing of the seasons. When the last of the year’s fledglings are self-sufficient, the winter migrants have arrived, and breeding territories are moot, it’s officially winter. The majority of birds are now much more concerned with surviving the cold, less abundant months, than defending their corners of the forest or your backyard.

Call them mixed-species foraging flocks or winter feeding flocks, every year these groups of birds form during the non-breeding season on Capitol Hill and across our region. They move together, across the landscape, foraging as they go, all day long.

The birds that make up these flocks in our part of the world have a fair amount in common. They are all small, active birds that eat a lot of insects (but also seeds and fruit). Most of them glean their meals from tree bark crevices and the undersides of leaves. Some are faster moving and more balletic, like kinglets, twirling about foliage and eating unseen tiny morsels. And others feel more methodical, like Brown Creepers, who do as they are named and crawl up and down tree trunks in search of sustenance. But they all seem to see the value of keeping close together while foraging this time of year. Continue reading →