NW Storm

[nootka]

Hi,

I'm only here for a few. Our phones are messed up and we have not had power since 11:30 Sunday a.m.

We have had gusts up over 100 mph since Sunday morning. Several storms have hit here and we have had epic rain. Our roof is leaking around our chimney and water's coming in our basement.

Right now we have the satellite and one computer hooked up to our generator which is the only way we can communicate with the outside. There are trees down and power lines down on the roads to town so are completely isolated here. Last night a power crew was trying to repair the damage before the storm abated and their truck blew over and into one of the sloughs. I hope noone was hurt, this is all stuff friends can see from their houses.

Those guys are my heroes....what a huge mess this is. The world's largest sitka spruce was killed yesterday in this storm, it was 1400 years old (though it was diseased/sick).

Anyway, we are all fine, the horses are fine. We have had about a dozen trees on our property blow down, some of them over our fence, but so far the barn is fine (there are a FEW trees on our neighbor's side that could hit the barn, but hoping we're ok). The wind is still blowing, so keep your fingers crossed and I will be thinking of you in other parts of the country with weather and storm issues.

Stay safe everyone....and may your damage be minimal!!! At this point, I am guessing it will be 7 days or more before we have electricity to our home. This is like the storm we had last year, but taking longer to finish, and we were out for 6 days then.

Liz & co. (the boat is tied up safely in Warrenton, and likely will not be going out until tomorrow at the earliest)

 

[ClickMini]

FLOODING HERE!!! There is not big river flooding YET, but there certainly will be...it is raining hard up at Stevens Pass and Snoqualmie after a lot of snow in the past couple of days...I expect this to be a bad one. This is the bad season for us here in WA, we will get a lot of snow followed by what is known as a Pineapple Express, warm heavy rains and often very windy. This is a bad one for rain totals, it is pouring here. My arena is flooded, my paddocks are flooded, the barn is surrounded by standing water, Tyler and Ben's shelter has a couple of inches of water in it. It is so wet...please stop by with the ARK...

 

[Basketmiss]

Nootka, and ClickMini,

I am so sorry to hear of your bad weather.. I hope it stops soon and you get back to normal..

I hate to see anyone lose power, especially for the heat issue, more than anything else.

We are all electric so if we lose power we freeze!!

Keep us informed that you are ok , when you can...

 

[nootka]

We do have a woodstove, so we have heat. It is not yet very cold, though, in the mid-50s for temps. These storms are luckily typically very warm. The bad thing is that it's going to take a long time to get power back.

We are walled in with trees and power lines tangled through it all.

If the weather turns cold, we will, indeed, be very cold. But it could be worse and we are all ok.

Good luck everyone with the flooding, the winds (which are still gusting).

I will upload a couple pics we took today from either side of the road to town (we tried to go somewhere but can't get further than a quarter mile one way, and 1.5 miles the other way. We have a truck parked on the other side of one snag, so could possibly get out that way if 202 is open). IF!

Liz

 

[nootka]

This is 1/4 mile to the West, the "alternate" way to town that's usually not blocked because it's sheltered by the hills.

This is 1.5 miles to the East/Southeast. If you saw the movie Into the Wild, this is the exact same spot that was in the film where the hippie RV w/the couple picked up Chris McCandless (filmed in June of 2006). It is covered with about 8 huge trees, now, all of which are tangled into power lines. Our "work" truck is on the other side of this snag of trees. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing right now.

It belongs to the owner of Martin's boat.

Our phones are unable to get out of the city limits. If anyone tries to call me and we don't answer, that's why. You might try our cell....if you need to. I really hope everyone's safe. The storm is STILL raging. I had thought it was over yesterday afternoon....

Liz

 

[mininik]

Wow. I'm glad it seems you're all okay! What a mess. The weather here was odd yesterday with rain, sleet and snow mixed in with clearing skies.

At least in our area it has settled for now.

 

[Mark & Sharon Bullington]

Well, as some of you know, Sharon and I moved into the 5th wheel full time as of November 2. So we got rocked to sleep last night by the wind. It eally shook the coach up, down, sideways, etc. But no leaks (knock on wood) and we haven't lost power (yet). We are in north Salem in an RV park. But boy howdy is the wind blowing. Hope Liz and all the rest make it through it all with no problems.

Mark

 

[hhpminis]

We are north of the storm that is heading east. We are just feeling the aftershocks. Most of our snow is gone now and it poured all night. We are about 40 degrees here right now and it has been highs of 25 or less for a week or so with snow.

We are all fine, but I have poop soup in my corrals. My barn is raised so it is dry. The wind has settled down to a mild one. We have many large trees around our house so the wet ground and wind is always a worry.

All you coasties please check in and let us know that you have not blown off to Oz.

Take care

 

[Miniv]

We're east of the Cascade Mountains from Liz............We've had only a sprinkle of rain, temps in the 40's and 50's, but we're getting some wind........Gusts are at 65 to 70 mph........which is a heck of a lot better than the 100 mph ones at the coast!

We have some downed limbs in the yard, but it sounds like we're pretty lucky.......

MA

 

[LindaL]

Here in the Portland area, we have LOTS of rain and wind, but the wind isn't really bad (not like at the coast!)...I live in an apt...ground level...and I have a "river" on my back patio area, where there was no water at all until yesterday!!! Good thing my patio is raised just enough that I doubt it will become a problem....I hope!!! Yikes!!

Stay safe everyone!!!

 

[Shari]

We had to go into town to get more rope, power was out while we were gone....just hope it doesn't go out again, as I do not want to loose the 700lbs of beef in the Freezer.

That road into town is barely passable, if it keeps raining, no one will be able to get into town that way. Haven't check the other road out. Hubby will figure that one out tomorrow.

Been pouring rain since yesterday,,, waterfalls where they shouldn't be... was expect to see Salmon swiming across the road.

The worse of it should be coming through any time now. Sigh ~~~

Hubby and DS will have to check the property over when the storm is over. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Horses aren't minding the weather...in fact acting like it is a nice day!

Glad you are hanging in there Liz... those pictures are impressive.

Hoping everyone else is doing ok. Has anyone heard from Susanne, Marie, Daryl and everyone else?

 

[hobbyhorse23]

Here in the Seattle area it's been windy but the much larger problem is the rain. My gosh, I grew up here and I don't think I've ever seen so much water come down at one time and for so long! Even in all that flooding last year and the epic 40 straight days of rain the year before our ditches never overran and today when I drove to work I was incredibly grateful that I now have an SUV as there was deep standing water everywhere.

Every single ditch was flooding.

I don't think there are even any branches down in our pastures but then again who could see them under all that water? I even brought Kody into the big horse barn and put him in the stall we used for his surgery because it gave him more room to move around then his own little stall which he was sensibly refusing to leave. You KNOW it's wet when my personal water-rat would rather be locked in a stall! OH!

So far we still have power and since we didn't lose it in the snow and wind on Saturday I don't think we'll lose it from simple rain. I hope! If we do we'll still have heat, just no running water and right now I don't think that's a problem.....

Leia

 

[Miniv]

We had to go into town to get more rope, power was out while we were gone....just hope it doesn't go out again, as I do not want to loose the 700lbs of beef in the Freezer.

Shari -- If you do lose power again -- DO NOT OPEN YOUR FREEZER. It will keep your meat good for at least a couple of days.....and hopefully by then the power will be back on.

MA

 

[ClickMini]

Well it is going from bad to worse here with regard to the flooding. I am feeling very depressed today, somehow this time of year can make me long for good ol' Floriday! Well I am going to go suit up and bail out the horse stalls. Cripes! Sick of it! STOP RAINING!!!!! ***shakes fist at sky****

 

[jayne]

Amy, look to the west!! It's 3:55pm and I can see the edge of the front coming this way. I am up in Arlington in the foothills and trust me, the end is coming soon!!

I just checked my rain guage and it is reading 1.75 inches, which is low for what everyone else in the area got. We had big winds too, but no damage other than small branches down. I think we were in a little bit of a rain shadow. I actually put the big horses (clydesdale, 2 donkeys, pony) out for from about 6am until 11:30am.

I am so sorry for your flooding. One of my criteria when looking for this farmette was that is not be able to flood, and we were very lucky to find this one in the foothills where everything slopes away from us. I can double up a couple of mine if you need a place to stall a couple of minis or a pony for a while.

My mom lives on the central Oregon coast and they got really badly nailed. Like Liz, they haven't had power since during church yesterday. My mom lives in a senior mobile home park and said many trees are down, but the weird part is that about 1/2 of them were just snapped off like twigs about 2 or 3 feet off the ground, and there were not little trees either. Yikes! She's got a wood stove and can cook on it too, so she's doing fine. Not like she'll run out of wood now!

Hang in there guys, the end is near! Then the clean up......

Jayne

 

[Shari]

MA,,, I wish my Freezer wasn't such a cheap model. Last year.. did not open it up at all... and had the power out for 2 days.. and every piece of meat was thawed out.

Freezer at the old farm was much better and had no problems with power outages.

Will just have to save money to see if I can't get the Frig and Freezer plugs wired up for a Generator.... or maybe some of that new solar panels that work in clouds. Sure need to do something if these high winds are the norm.

 

[Sterling]

I'm all the way over on the opposite coast but have been keeping tabs on your guys over there. Been watching it all on the news and the weather channels. How scarey is this to have a repeat of last year! I was in touch with Nancy (Equuisize) and in remembering their flood last year we are thankful that so far they have just a few downed trees and altho the power is out there too...all humans and critters are a.o.k. Please be careful, stay safe and check in whenever you can!

BTW...we're getting some whipping winds with gusts of 35 to 40 mph....but nothing compared to what you guys are going thru!

 

[Mona]

Keeping you ALL in my prayers.

 

[Crabby-Chicken]

This was a wild one!

We have power,,, but our septic started backing up,,, for whatever reason yesterday. My son and husband spent the day digging enough of the ground off to snake some of it out...

On the way to work there are branches and water on the road. I-5 was closed down her and a levy was breeched and people who have NEVER flooded got it. I feel so bad for them,,,

Amy I am glad you got your shopping done, I don't know if that part of town has water or not. Our road we live on is blocked to the north. A lot of schools were closed, of course not ours... But we are lucky.

 

[nootka]

I am back up for a while w/my generator and satellite dish.

We are making dinner and hanging out.

There is nowhere in this county to get fuel, and I DO THINK hwy 30 has one lane open between here and Clatskanie.

We cannot use the phones as none can dial in. I can't even call friends that live in the same county to check on them. I am worried about our friend that drives tow. I could not get ahold of him today and his cell sounded odd.

Betting he's ok, just working too hard.

Here are some more photos:

Downtown Astoria today

A large arena a few miles from here...

Our neighbor's house... she's at our house right now.

The falls just above her house...they are usually very small compared to this...and not so brown!

A tree that blew out of the ground last night. I think this tree must be about 150 ft. The man that owns this property was clearing the roads so we could drive to town w/his skidsteer.

Goodnight for now, I may look back in later, but we're all safe and the winds have now subsided at last.

Hope everyone else is safe. The worst floding may be the next flood tide.

Liz