Winter with no power

[allforcats]

But this subject of power outages is trivia compared with winter's cloudiness and drizzle. That's what drives people away from here.

[MichaelinWA]

In terms of blizzards and snow, our winters are cake in comparison to places like the Northeast and Midwest. The winters in the Seattle area are certainly gray and way too long, and you need to think hard about them before moving, but power outages, per se, are a pretty minor point in the scheme of things. Especially in highly urban areas, as others have noted.

Originally Posted by chelseagirl

Remember, I am a native from Las Vegas, and I have never experienced "winter". Well we did have some snow that stuck to the ground for a second, but seriously our winters are cake in comparison to the rest of the country.

[jwb123]

In the 3 winters we lived in the Bothell/Mill Creek area, 3 of those winters we lost power for a significant time. The first two, we spent time at my mom's house in Redmond - but we lost ALL of our groceries (and we had JUST gone to the store!!!). The last one, my mom had moved out of state, so we didn't have anywhere to go, nor did we have a generator. We went up to Everett and stayed in a hotel. We had young young ones at the time, and one that in an instant could need medical attention - so we couldn't rough it out with just a fire. It was a fun mini vacation for the family.... but an expensive, unexpected one.... we lost all our groceries then too.

Those were the only winters I remember loosing power. In my almost 10 years in Seattle, I have lived in the city, in Redmond, and in Issaquah... and Bothell/Mill Creek was the only place that I lived, with delicate power (it was out OFTEN, like the slightest wind it seemed).

[woodinvilleguy]

But since December 06, almost all the power poles are brand spanking new :-)

Our neighborhood had underground power lines it is all the feeders to the neighborhood that are above ground.

Like said before the worst part about Winter in Seattle is the grey months. If you can handle that, you are golden. When it snows it is a driving mess but it is beautiful and you just forget about all your troubles. When you go months without seeing a shadow you mind goes numb. (at least in my case)

[wannabeaTexan]

I live in Renton...during that '06 wind storm, I only lost power for awhile in the middle of the night and the only reason I knew that was because my alarm clock was blinking when I woke up. That's the only "trouble" I had, except for my cell phone not working very well. But down the street, some had days of power outages as described in previous posts. I don't know if we just got lucky or what.

Other than that, my power was out once in the last few years that I can remember and I took my kids to dinner at Red Robin and it was back on when we returned.

[dcoolbro]

The winter of 06 was definitely a memorable one. First the snow storm that shut the streets down and folks took 3 to 5 hours to get home. Then a month later we had to endure the wind storm that took power out for days. That winter was an anomaly for sure.

[jwb123]

To clarify my post - I was gone by the winter of 06, so my power outages did not occur during that time. There are certain areas where the power seems to be delicate, crippling winter storm or not.

[mayfair]

The worst we ever had it was 5 days out during the Inauguration Day storm (Clinton's). We only lost power for a day in 06, but one of dh's coworkers on the Eastside was out for 13 days.

[LordBalfor]

The thing to keep in mind about the greater Seattle area is that there are a LOT of trees. This is especially true of the suburbs furthest out - where they are up against the heavily forested foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Those areas get outages pretty "frequently" during winter storms. Having said that, MOST such outages are relatively short.

I live in a FAR more developed area (down near the airport) and in the time we've lived in this house (18 years) the longest we've been without power was 6-7 hours when lightning hit the power pole across the street from my house. Aside from that freak incident (in the spring) the longest we've ever lost power in those 18 years is just a few minutes.

During the big storm of 06 we were the ONLY members of our family to have power continuously - and thus were hosting almost everyone in my family for variously lengths of time (a sister who lived in Duval was with us a week until her power was restored out there).

Ken