Tag Archives: weather

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 →

Capitol Hill mostly unscathed as ‘bomb cyclone’ winds hit Puget Sound

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Capitol Hill, the Central District, and Seattle’s core neighborhoods were mostly spared overnight as winds from a rare “bomb cyclone” event whipped across Western Washington. More than 50,000 were reported without power Wednesday morning in the city with another 600,000 with no electricity across the region.

One woman was reported killed when a tree fell on her Lynnwood encampment Tuesday night.

Seattle City Light’s outage map as of Wednesday morning showed the areas around Capitol Hill remarkably unscathed

Wednesday, light rail service was delayed by an hour so Sound Transit could make safety checks across its system.

Across Capitol Hill, lights flickered and internet service was temporarily disrupted overnight but no major outages were reported despite reports of trees and branches knoced down across the area by the rare easterly winds.

Long-term efforts to move more of the city’s utilities underground hopefully helped. CHS reported here last year on how areas of Capitol Hill with less large scale multifamily apartment development have been left behind in the city’s efforts to move more of its electrical infrastructure underground.

The National Weather Service forecasts calmer conditions in Seattle until the remnants of the storm bring winds in the mid-20s to the city Friday along with cool temperatures and showers.

 

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Charge your phone — ‘Anomalously strong storm system’ will make for windy night in Seattle

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Charge your devices and expect a few big branches to fall as the National Weather Service is predicting wind gusts up to 40 MPH on Capitol Hill Tuesday night and more severe windstorm conditions in the region as “anomalously strong storm system” moves in.

The storm will take on different dimensions than typical events as easterly winds will whip across Western Washington caused by the low pressure front. Continue reading →

Your Capitol Hill forecast should improve as National Weather Service readies new zones to predict storms around Seattle

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If this weekend’s thunder and lightning caught you off guard, hang in there. Seattle’s weather forecasting is changing.

Between September and March, the National Weather Service will implement changes to public zones in the Seattle region to make them more focused and specific to the unique features of the areas around Puget Sound. The hope is to  address issues with the current zone configurations which can have considerable over or under warnings to communities during extreme weather events.

“It allows us to have a little bit more fidelity when it comes to where we issue watches, warnings and advisories,” Reed Wolcott, warning coordination meteorologist for NWS, tells CHS.

“The zone that the Seattle metro area is in right now…it’s a big zone, so it extends down to almost Tacoma and includes SeaTac. The new zone for the Seattle metro area does not include SeaTac, so it’s more reflective of the Seattle metro area.” Continue reading →

Hazy forecasts headed into weekend in so far mild summer for Seattle smoke

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Expect a hazy Thursday with possible less healthy conditions around the city into the weekend as the 2024 Seattle smoke season has so far been mostly a mild affair.

Forecasters with the Washington Smoke Information effort say we can expect increasingly hazy conditions across Seattle into Thursday as smoke from four large wildfires to our east pours into the Puget Sound:

The westerly winds that have been blowing smoke away from Western Washington are expected to change course later this week.  Winds blowing from east to west will likely bring smoke into the region.  The four main fires that may contribute are:

  • The Shetland Creek fire – located 100 miles north of the US-Canada border in British Columbia, currently 67,000 acres
  • The Calcite Creek fire – located on the Canadian side of the Okanogan National Forest, currently 10,000 acres
  • The Pioneer fire – Lake Chelan, currently 35,000 acres
  • The Retreat fire – Yakima, currently 41,000 acres

Wildfire smoke could arrive in Western Washington Wednesday night into Thursday morning.

Seattle has thus far been spared long periods of high scores on the Air Quality Index but the eastern parts of the state including areas around Yakima and Spokane have been socked in with wildfire smoke in recent weeks.

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency and officials with the state smoke monitoring effort say conditions around Western Washington could create an oscillating pattern “where smoke comes into the region overnight then clears out somewhat during the day” possibly overnight Wednesday and Thursday night into Friday morning as well. Continue reading →

Cal Anderson’s wading pool will remain dry this summer — Here’s how a new way to stay cool in the park is coming together

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With reporting by Nova Berger/CHS Intern

As the Seattle Parks Department and community and business groups work to make improvements and add new features to bring more activity to Cal Anderson and help address public safety issues around the busy Capitol Hill park, there is a big, wet opportunity right there and waiting this summer.

The Cal Anderson Park Alliance is working on early planning for reactivating — or replacing — the park’s wading pool that has sat dry for years thanks to a confluence of budget issues and needed repairs and construction.

The pool was officially drained and closed in 2020 as part of the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

CAPA is now leading efforts to explore the future of the wading pool. They are working with the city to evaluate options for the space that they hope will improve the park while also providing a needed resource when temperatures soar in the neighborhood. Continue reading →