And the Wind will blow - Democratic Underground

Mythsaje

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Fri Dec-15-06 09:25 PM
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And the Wind will blow

Those of you paying attention to the national news tonight are probably aware of how hard we in the Pacific Northwest got hammered last night, between torrential rains and intense winds. The Oregon Coast had it worse than did we, with gusts on the coast itself hitting over 120 mph, and on Mt. Hood, 99 mph.

I live in Tacoma and we apparently saw gusts of 69 mph and remarkable lightning with no sound of thunder. Just the wind screaming and rattling the windows. At about 12:30 we heard a ferocious crash and a car alarm going off.

We leaped out of bed and ran to the front door, stepping out on the porch to nearly swoon in both relief and regret. The huge dogwood tree across the street went down, falling almost directly northward along the edge of the street, crushing at least two of the neighbors' cars and missing ours by about 30 feet. Had it fallen eastward, it would have landed on OUR house and cars. Had it fallen that way, I'm not sure the cars would have mattered much.

When I got home from work tonight the tree was being cut up by a work crew, freeing two of one neighbor's cars from the back part of his driveway. He lost one car and another neighbor's car took the tree straight through the roof, the front windshield, and pretty much destroyed it.

Our dogs and cat were all worried last night. It was almost a FOUR dog night, except my Shiba Inu isn't a big fan of cuddling. He was only willing to hang out on the bed if he was getting petted.

Close to a million people are still without power. We were lucky. The power went off briefly sometime last night, but was on again by morning. We have power, cable, and internet, which makes us pretty fortunate. Power wasn't much of a surprise, since we live on a hospital grid.

Now the cold is going to hit, and that's going to make it hard on a lot of people in the area who don't have any method of heating their house without power.

I was watching the news and discovered that a woman drowned in her basement in the early onslaught, her studio becoming a deathtrap in initial onslaught of the storm. It gave me chills when they announced that she was one of the most popular audiobook narrators and they played a clip of her voice and I knew it. Not well--she wasn't one of the narrators of the books I've listened to most often, but I had heard her voice before.

It's so strange how such astounding things can hit you out of the blue.

In the wake of all of this I had a chuckle about twenty minutes ago, when a couple of the next-door neighbor's dogs were out on the street, confronting by another neighbor's cat in the middle of the street (I live on a quiet residential street) and the neighbor's big dog (a pit bull pup about a year old--one of the friendly ones) was backed off by the cat. Until the neighbor's other dog (a much smaller lab/something cross) came running up behind him yipping, as if calling him a coward. The pit turned around and chased the cat, though not with particular intensity. The cat got away without a lot of trouble.

I walked back in the house with the thought that some of the Republican front-runners are a lot like that pit bull. Hesitant to engage, but spurred on by their smaller, less formidable pack-mates. It was a weird moment. Of course, maybe I'm just feeling particular philosophical right now. Feels like we dodged a bullet.

Well, we're still okay here. I know it made national news and wanted to check in and let everyone know that we weathered it okay.