As you may have no doubt heard by now, due to a massive storm which dumped tons of rain, and about a million-a-mile hours winds, practically half of Seattle and area is out of power.

Since the nature of the power outage is winds blowing trees and poles over, the pattern of outage is semi-random. The core areas are all fine, downtown, nearby neighbourhoods, like Queen Anne (mine) are just fine. There were some streets nearby me that were without power, but I myself did not lose power at home.

Although work did not fare as well. On Thursday around 3pm our security folk emailed us to come pick up our emergency flashlights. I guess a few months ago they discovered that the batteries in the "emergency lights" were dead, and the whole building had to escape in the pitch black stairs. So this time, we had flashlights. First power outage hit around 4-4:30 while I was in the bathroom. Nothing like a pitch black bathroom - the power came back less than a minute so my next stop was to pick up a safety flashlight. It never left my side for the next 4 hours.

I figured it was time to leave work when they shut down all the servers, I couldn't get any work done, and also the storm "drain" was more like a storm "undrain" and actually spewing water out in a small 1 foot fountain. When cars were driving through 6" of water I knew it was time to leave.

Lucky I took the bus, and caught the first Seattle bound bus, figuring being on the right side of the 520 bridge was the most important consideration. Especially since there is a wind limit and they close that bridge (and they did close it for about 14 hours). So I looped via the University District, then downtown. Including a quick stop at Metropolitan Market for the snack-on, it took about 3 hours to get home. I had to walk the last half mile, that bus just wasn't coming.

Considering that over 1 million people are without power, I am lucky. Also double lucky - no work, no possibility of doing remote work either. It really sucks for those farther out - in some of the nooks and crannies it could take up to a week or two (or three!) to get power back. Mostly this is because crews have to find every little fallen pole and set it right again. For power outages to just a few homes due to a fallen pole, they are in for a long cold wait. Good luck to all.