Cyclone Bomb Storm In the Pacific Northwest

This post will be updated with the status of the things as the Cyclone Bomb storm progresses over the next couple days.

10/24/2021 – 8:00am The weather forecasters are saying things like the biggest storm to ever hit the Pacific Northwest. Here is what Cliff Mass had to say:

… the formation of an unprecedented storm is nearly a sure thing, with the very latest forecasts of sea level pressure for Sunday morning from both the U.S. and European models predicteing the strongest Northwest storm in history with pressures below 945 hPa (see below).  Just crazy.  Equivalent to a category three hurricane.

Very ominous words from a weather forecaster.

10/24/2021 – 8:30am I guess this goes to show how big of a geek I am. I created a database to track the number of Puget Sound Energy customers that were without power. In the past I would keep an eye on this number to see how bad things really are. Rather than guessing, I am looking at real data that shows how the storm has impacted things. I then created a stored procedure to pull the data from the PSE website and load it into my database every 5 minutes so that I can track the change over time. After that I built a SSRS report to display the data, and here is what it looks like.

I am expecting that in the duration of this storm that we will see the PSE outage count increase.

Also, at this point in time, the wind outside is very light. Nothing to be concerned with yet.

10/24/2021 – 12:30pm The wind has slowed, almost as though we are in the calm before the storm. Did I mention how stupid I think it is that the whole rest of the world calls these storms hurricanes, but in the pacific northwest, they call them cyclones. Its the same thing, just another name.

10/24/2021 – 2:20pm I expanded the reporting to also pull the atmospheric pressure, wind speed and wind gusts from my weather station into the same reporting table, so that I can see how the outage numbers correlate to the wind speeds at my house.

10/24/2021 – 2:45pm The wind is starting to pick up, gusts now to 50 mph. Keep in mind, it is not that unusual for us to get 50mph wind were we live, so this is not big deal. It doesn’t usually start to get interesting until around 65mph. However that does depend a bit on the tides, if the tides are high, 50mph can be quite interesting. Lucky for us, the high tide for the day as passed, and we don’t have to worry about tides until around 10:00am tomorrow.

10/24/2021 – 3:08pm We just experienced our first power outage as part of the storm. It lasted about 10 minutes, just long enough for me to get the generator going, then to realize the power was back on. Thanks PSE for getting things restored so quick.

10/24/2021 – 3:30pm Doing a quick inventory of everything that we need to stay online and keep reporting status while the storm progresses. Generator, backup generator. Backup internet, borrowed from my boat using the spare MOFI router. The reason for the backup internet, is that with Comcast/XFinity even I have have generator power at my house, the internet only seems to work for about an hour after the power goes out. I am assuming that is because the UPS battery backups for the cable network routers eventually run out of power.

10/24/2021 – 3:50pm Just found out that there was a weather record set today for the lowest pressure ever in the PNW, the previous record was cyclone Harriet in 1977. This is going to get interesting.

10/24/2021 – 4:50pm The winds have dropped back down to around 40mph for a while now. We took the dogs out for a walk they had some fun in the wind.

I did notice a new record on my weather station. We did have a wind gust to 106mph at one point a couple hours ago. I believe the highest I have ever seen before was about 75mph.

10/24/2021 – 6:20pm So far the storm is not hitting as hard as was expected by this point in Northwest Washington. PSE is going a great job keeping up with the power outages, and they have even made some progress, down from 85k without power to close to 70k without power now.

Oh, and did I mention how silly this whole cyclone bomb name is…

10/25/2021 6:30am – Winds continued throughout the night at 30mph to 40mph. Nothing interesting at this point to report, power and internet are good. No storm damage at our house.

10/25/2021 8:30am – We are about 2 hours away from high tide, and the water level is significantly higher than normal. Preparing sand bags with hopes that we do not need them.

10/25/2021 10:45am – We survived high tide.

10/24/2021 11:45am – The wind has started to increase again:

Also noticing a slight uptick in the number of PSE customers without power. PSE has been doing a great job getting power restored, but the last hour show an increase in the number without power by about 5000.

10/25/2021 4:30pm Winds seem to be in the 45mph to 55mph range. The wind certainly feels a bit stronger now. Still have power, still have internet. No issues to report.

10/25/2021 7:30pm winds have dropped to about 15mph to 20mph, it is starting to feel like this wind event is over.

 

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