The Pacific Northwest is in a tizzy today. Why? It’s gonna rain.
[I’ll just wait here until the laughter dies down… Okay… Finished? Good. Onward.]
Yes, it’s gonna rain, and it’s gonna rain good. We have a series of deep low-pressure cyclones heading our way, one of which is the remnants of Typhoon Songda, and the gradients are setting up to rival the historically massive Columbus Day storm of 1962: sustained winds (not gusts) of 50+ knots, 5–10 inches of rain in the mountains, flooding, power outages, The Works.
These storms are going to wallop us from today to Sunday; already the heavy rains have begun.
To prepare, yesterday we went out to get a few punkles of firewood. Our neighborhood is not prone to power outages, but this weekend may be the exception, so I thought it best to lay in a small amount of supplementary fuel. We drove up to WinCo, where they usually have a couple pallets of firewood out front.
Nothing but pumpkins. Ruh roh.
We went to Fred Meyer. Pumpkins. Central Market? Pumpkins. Safeway (yeah…right)…pumpkins.
The world has gone pumpkin crazy.
Hopefully the power won’t go out here or, if it does, not for long. We have a couple of punkles left over from vacation, plus a bin of scrap wood from old projects down in the garage. And there are some large branches in the back garden, trimmed and laid out as nurse logs, that I could chop up. We’ll be fine. Besides, these systems aren’t particularly cold, just wet and wild.
I hope to take a walk in the teeth of it, to enjoy the fury and strength first-hand.
See you on the far side.
k
Unraveling Time
Desert Wind
Ploughman's Son
Ploughman King
The Year the Cloud Fell
The Spirit of Thunder
Shadow of the Storm
The Cry of the Wind
Beneath a Wounded Sky
Cryptogenesis: A Memoir
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 
…typing as the rain really picks up.
On the bright side it won’t be cold, and we have at least one tank of propane for the grill.
It *would* be a shame to lose the harvest in the freezer though.
..and now it’s stopped..
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if you’re concerned, there’s a trick to try. Fill a mug with crushed ice. Then put a quarter on top of the ice and put the mug in the freezer. If you have a power outage, check the mug when the power comes back on, if the quarter is at the bottom, the ice melted and everything in the freezer is suspect. If it’s in the middle, you may have lost some. If it’s still on top of the ice, you’re good to go.
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Good idea. The issue is fitting the mug in the freezer.
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Snort! Your freezer must be like ours.
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That wasn’t as bad as advertised.
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Friday’s storm hit Oregon hard. Saturday’s storm, which was supposed to be the big one, split into two low pressure hubs that stole energy from one another, and made Saturday a non-event. Still, a couple ten thousands without power, tornadoes, injuries. It wasn’t a big deal, but it wasn’t nothing either.
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Waving to you from the other side of the freeway. Where I am safe and warm.
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So far so good here. A few flickers is all. And we’re in a pocket that’s pretty dependable, so I’m not too worried. Stay dry…
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