Not By the Hair of my Chinny Chin Chin!

The big bad wolf tried and tried but he couldn't blow our little house down.

Wow! I haven't seen a storm like the one that hit Seattle Thursday night since the famous Inauguration Day storm of 1993. Back then we were in an apartment but this time we weathered the storm in a house surrounded by tall trees. Winds in the area were clocked at well over 80 MPH so you can imagine how uncomfortable we felt surrounded by all those trees. At one point the rain was coming down so hard (over 1 inch/hour) that we had a waterfall of water spilling over our gutters. A huge fir tree on the property line between our house and our neighbor's house was blown down. Luckily it fell to the east and blocked our neighbor's driveway. If it had fallen the other way it would have either hit our house or smashed our cars. Other houses in our neighborhood were not so lucky.

Power remains out at our house and most neighborhoods in the outlying areas on the East Side. I'm writing this from another computer in downtown Redmond which only recently has had power restored. We may be without power for another day or more so don't be surprised if I don't answer any email or respond to any comments for a while.

At the end of it all, we feel very blessed to have got through this relatively unscathed. There was no damage to our house or property. We have a generator that is keeping our food cold and allowing us to heat one room. We also have a gas fireplace which has kept us warm enough. The kids are treating it like a camping trip. Things could be much, much worse.

I'll post some pictures when we get our power back.