Results tagged “rain”

Steve Pool is promising eighty degrees by Saturday, but we know better than to hang our hopes on the emptiness that is a Seattle weather person’s five-day forecast. Just go outside, shit is cold. If summer is going to spring back into form like a sunny Lazarus, we won’t complain--but right now it’s taking more faith than us heathens can afford. Coming off maybe the wettest Bumbershoot in memory, this feels like an appropriate time to reflect on the summer in the past tense.

A PLAY OF MAGICAL THINKING: Intiman Theatre presents The Year of Magical Thinking, a play by well-known and much-loved author Joan Didion, based on her bestselling memoir of the same name. Directed by Sama Lapine and starring Judith Roberts, this beautiful show relives the heartbreaking aftermath of Didion losing her husband of 40 years while her daughter lay in intensive care, and how she coped with her grief.

It's the first day of real rain after a loooooooooong dry spell, and UW weather sage Cliff Mass says: Watch out! "During the dry period oil, dust and other debris collect on roadways and the addition of water produces a slippery emulsion." It certainly does, and you notice it taking the corners, or on a hill. That said, at the moment traffic flow looks pretty good.

Seattle weather guru Cliff Mass has some unsettling news: May 20 to June 30 was the driest such period in the 116-year history of Seattle weather-record-keeping. Seattle got a mere .18 inches of rain--not enough to chase a whiskey--deblitermashing the previous record by a full .1 inch! Suck it, 1934.

First rain in 30 days by aphid00, from the Seattlest Flickr Pool

Cliff Mass says no rain was detected at SeaTac (despite a few drops in Seattle yesterday), and so we've moved into contention for the "longest dry run in May-June" in recorded history. Truly these are days of miracle and wonder.

Cliff Mass says we got us a real frog-strangler bearing down on us. The storm should arrive in western Washington this afternoon, with winds and anywhere from a quarter to three-quarters of an inch of rainfall. The southwest side of the Olympics could get 2-4 inches, so if you want to play blue-tarp camper, this is your moment!

It's snowing like hell near Microsoft, Wedgwood has sun and blue skies, Capitol Hill has sunbreaks and winds, and Shoreline was getting pelted by snow pellets. Of course, that was five minutes ago, so by now the opposite could be true in every case. We keep looking out the window and thinking it's either late December or April. But that's March for you. Meanwhile Metro's list of impacted buses is growing.

Cliff Mass says: "The latest prediction by the National Weather Service's Climatic Prediction Center is for cooler and wetter than normal conditions over the next month. Sounds like a La Nina forecast to me." Sweet. Cold and wet. If we were a mushroom, we'd be looking forward to that. In any event, you are now required to skip out of work any time there's sun over the next few days. Seattlest says so. Let us know if you need a permission slip.

Last night--see Exhibit A, to the right--we walked home in a snow flurry. This morning it's 25 degrees and sunny. Tomorrow, says Cliff Mass, it's back to a rainy gray: "Temps will warm rapidly as the associated front approaches and there should be considerable rain shadowing from Seattle northward. So it is possible that some locations will initially see some snow (particularly south Tacoma) that will turn to rain."

Finally we've found a replacement for clicking updates on political polls--clicking for weather updates on Cliff Mass's blog: "There should be an inch or two by the end of the Wed. morning commute. At this point it looks like temperatures will warm up enough by midday that that the snow might turn very wet or even to rain at the lowest elevations...but we are right on the edge." Then later on Wednesday, another system is headed our way that could bring rain or a lot more snow, depends on how lucky we are. Has anyone read Cliff's book?

So be careful! We're looking at high winds tomorrow, and by Saturday there should be a couple feet of snow in the mountains "followed by frigid temperatures." Thus far, Chinook, Cayuse, and the North Cascades Highway passes are all to be closed. We still haven't seen anything saying there will be snow within the Seattle city limits, but if you live up north, it might be time to stock up on salt for your driveway.

The CDN on CNN? The Central District News blog got a chance to describe Seattle and the neighborhood for CNN; it's a good read--almost as if Scott spent more time on this article than on a typical blog post. (We kid because we love!) Scott suggests a unique tour guide for the CD: "A good way to tour the neighborhood is to load up your iPod with Sir Mix-A-Lot's 'Posse on Broadway' and follow the streets as they're called out in the song. And don't forget to grab a box of delicious Ezell's Fried Chicken -- they say Oprah loves it!" Of course, he also gives pointers on the weather: "Some seasons are wetter than others around here. To guarantee a damp experience, your best bet would be to plan your travels for sometime in the narrow window between late October and the 4th of July."

And we quote from the weather advisory: "FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM PST THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH LATE FRIDAY NIGHT ... THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SEATTLE HAS EXPANDED THE FLOOD WATCH TO INCLUDE A PORTION OF WESTERN WASHINGTON ... INCLUDING THE FOLLOWING COUNTIES ... KING ... KITSAP ... LEWIS ... PIERCE ... THURSTON. FROM 4 PM PST THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH LATE FRIDAY NIGHT. PERIODS OF LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL ARE EXPECTED TO DEVELOP OVER THE WATCH AREA THURSDAY AND PERSIST THROUGH FRIDAY NIGHT." Wear your galoshes if you're going out tonight. [Update: new shit has come to light: "NEW COMPUTER MODELS ARE SHIFTING HEAVY PRECIPITATION SOUTHWARD FROM EARLIER GUIDANCE AND ARE ALSO

Pamplona is not Seattle, we can all agree. The bulls run every morning in Pamplona during the ten-day festival of San Fermin in July, which would never work in Seattle.. Blue Angels strafe Seattle every August during Seafair, which would never work in Pamplona.

fall or winter? by M P G

We've been remiss in cultivating our Flickr moving images pool. Thankfully, the purity and essence of Flickr hasn't been diminished by a flood of YouTube-style video. On the other hand, it seems like relatively few people are posting video to Flickr. And we've been inexcusably lazy.

Looks like tonight's long-awaited Radiohead show at White River Amphitheater in Auburn is going to be a wet one. Reports from Auburn have included hail and a continuous downpour. While Radiohead is one of our favorite rainy-day bands, we were very much hoping not to experience that weather live tonight. But whatever. It is Thom Yorke and Radiohead, and whatever that other local blog says, Radiohead is possibly the greatest band performing today; and rain or shine, it's going to be a pleasure to see them. Just prepare for it, folks: bring a change of clothes for the car, a tarp or garbage bags to try and stay dry, and drinks and snacks for the inevitable hours-long wait after the concert.

Just after our heat-induced smog watch got dropped--Seattle broke the Clean Air Act and now has to perform an act of contrition--the weather has decided to juke to the left. The forecast is for over an inch of rain the next three days. We were just over at AccuWeather watching a caravan of animated clouds inching from Portland to Seattle. Kinda weird seeing water flow uphill like that.

This story reminds us of a line from The Beatles' "Taxman". The fact that it's illegal to collect too much rain that falls on your property because of state water laws seems just as ridiculous as the idea of the government taxing your feet to walk. But these are strange times, friends, because in Washington, the rain that falls is property of the state and up to them to regulate.

The weather, it just gets worse.

Sitting here, looking out our window at the torturous rain and gray skies, thinking about killing ourselves--you know, the usual thing to do when it's June but still feels like February.

This is what the sun looks like, and that blue stuff behind it, that is called the sky.

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We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Seattlest.