You can set your watch by it. November arrives and here it comes, wet, windy and nasty weather -- sometimes all at once. Sadly, the storm from last night even proved deadly as one local man was struck by a falling tree. When the mountain snow hits, it just adds a little more to the travel troubles of the storm season in the Puget Sound area and Washington state in general.The Take Winter By Storm campaign is one way PSE and other local partners including King County, the City of Seattle and State Farm Insurance are working to help get everybody ready for rough weather, with the TWBS effort including radio and TV commercials, as well as a handy preparedness checklist on the TWBS website.
The photo here is from an event we held for Take Winter By Storm this week, and it features PSE's Dennis Smedsrud doing a demonstration of how falling trees can impact the power grid as KIRO-TV videographer Richard Marshall takes pictures. Lots of "buzz" and "zap" for the cameras, and some helpful advice from the experts. If you see a downed line, stay away! And call either PSE at 1-888-225-5773 or 9-1-1 and wait until help arrives.
Generators were also part of the demonstration, and PSE wants you to use those safely too.
The Seattle Times' Richard Seven covered the exhibition, and has some great tips in his article from Nov. 3.
Our weather these past few weeks shows how quickly things can change around here at this time of year, with some dazzling sunny days followed by heavy rain and high winds, and even a little thunder and lightning. Surprisingly, we tend to get thunder fairly frequently at this time of year, especially in periods of rapidly changing weather, and little lightning is in the forecast through the weekend.
While everyone should take time to get set for nature's next bit of drama (whatever that may be) mountain drivers in particular should be thinking ahead. The National Weather Service has winter warnings up for the Cascades today, and any time now we will get our first avalanche closures and big snows on roads such as I-90 Snoqualmie, US 12 White Pass and US 2 Stevens Pass.
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