November News and a Seattle Bomb Cyclone

A Seattle Bomb Cyclone?

Before I get to the outrageous title, I want to say, for the record, that I am a very prompt person. I am always on time but cannot publish a newsletter by the first of the month to save my life. It seems that we are always traveling the first week of the month. So, I apologize once again. We are currently in Toronto and heading home.

Oh boy, November was a rough one. I’m glad it went by so fast. It is not my nature to report on negative things; however, this one is a doozy and rather interesting. We had just arrived home from an extraordinary tour of Patagonia, and then the Seattle Bomb Cyclone hit. What?

The Seattle Bomb Cyclone and Blackout

Have you ever heard of a bomb cyclone? It’s a severe weather phenomenon no one has ever heard of, and we had one in the PNW. A bomb cyclone is “a large, intense midlatitude storm with low pressure at its center, weather fronts, and an array of associated weather, from blizzards to severe thunderstorms to heavy precipitation.” It blew trees down everywhere on the east side of Seattle and made a massive mess of the roads with 500,000+ people without power.

What did this mean for us? We were without power for five days. No electricity, which meant no Wifi, of course, freezing temps, and then on top of that, we had no cell service. At the onset, I considered it an adventure, but after two days, it wasn’t fun anymore. We initially used camping lanterns; thank you, son-in-law (SIL). I hand-lit the gas range burners and whipped up delightful meals, trying to use up what we had in the refrigerator. Eventually, the food spoiled, I was constantly cold, and we had to drive 30 minutes away to catch a cell signal!

My workaholic husband was losing his mind.

And rightly so.

Craig had so many people counting on him and no way to reach them. We eventually figured out that downtown Seattle had POWER – Cue the Angel music. So we packed up our overnight bags, Rocco the dog and his accoutrement, and headed to the Hyatt Regency Seattle.

We knew Hyatt would allow dogs to stay, so we moved into our temporary shelter. However, we did not leave Rocco alone in the hotel room for fear of him barking, so we had to bring food to our room (fun for one meal, not nine). It was madness. Craig was on the phone, Rocco wanted attention, and I was trying to write. To be clear and defend my sweet Rocco, he is not really a barker, but you know there are strangers with voices outside the door, and he needed to protect us.

Almost three days later, we packed up and went home. Our daughter and SIL had their power restored much sooner and no longer needed their emergency generator. Our thoughtful SIL spent a lot of time hooking it up for us at our home, and just as they were ready to turn it on, the power came on two days early, unexpectedly. The total outage was to be at least seven days, but we ended up with five, almost six days. Still a loooong time.

This experience taught me so much. I really appreciate and cherish hot water, heat, and the ability to make fresh food. I also found this experience to be so disorienting and distracting, and hard to concentrate on anything. I have always sympathized with people who suffer through natural disasters, but you don’t know what you don’t know; I am grateful. We met many displaced people at the Hyatt who suffered bigger tragedies from the Seattle Bomb Cyclone than we did.

Thanks for listening.

The Good Stuff in November:

We attended a gorgeous wedding in Southern California – So fun to see old friends and celebrate such a beautiful couple. We enjoyed a walk in the harbor, too.