This is the PSE substation at Snoqualmie Falls. Generally the water isn't way up that high. Holy smokes folks!
The Raging Puyallup River at River Walk. This is a pic of a co-workers sisters backyard. The pillar cement round things you see are normally near 6 feet tall, and borders a walk way to the edge of Puyallup River. This pix was taken at 2pm Wed January 7th.
PSE South King Service 6905 S 228th St.Kent, WA
The Raging Puyallup River at River Walk. This is a pic of a co-workers sisters backyard. The pillar cement round things you see are normally near 6 feet tall, and borders a walk way to the edge of Puyallup River. This pix was taken at 2pm Wed January 7th.
PSE South King Service 6905 S 228th St.Kent, WAI used to work here, and this area is where we generally park our cars.
This location was drained last night, and all you see here is from overnight rainfall to this morning, 8am, Thursday January 8th, 2009.
First we have record snowfall before Christmas and NOW we are expecting to build an Ark like Noah did to make it to spring!!!
Here are some highlights from local papers detailing the chaos here at home.
Seattle is north of us about 30/40 minutes.
Tacoma is south of us about 15 minutes.
Chehalis & Centralia are an hour or more south of us.
That area flooded badly in 2006 and the State closed it as precaution last night.
As for Fife, which is us ((Milton / Fife)), the State closed the 2 right lanes of I-5 South as it was flooding from a local pond-slash-lake.
Nothing like this is affecting Thomas or I or may family locally.
Here are some pictures and links.
Love ya! Wahoo!!!
See why I prefer SNOW.
Here are some highlights from local newspapers:
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 6:35 PM PST
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Record flooding closes I-5 near Chehalis; emergency declared in Tacoma
By MIKE BARBER AND DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL, P-I REPORTERS
More than 25,000 people were told to leave their homes in the Puyallup River Valley Wednesday, while floodwaters threatened to close Interstate 5 in two places and the city of Tacoma declared a state of emergency in the face of major-to-record flooding inundating most Western Washington river basins.
Shortly after 6 p.m., the State Patrol and state Department of Transportation closed a 20 mile stretch of I-5 in Lewis County south of Chehalis between mileposts 68 and 88.
Near Fife at the same time, water was beginning to creep over a levee breach and onto the freeway shortly before 6:30 p..m., with the right lane of I-5 southbound covered with water and closed for about 1 mile near Fife, though traffic was allowed to move through. Troopers and road crews monitored the freeway to plot closure points later in the evening.
"This is going to be a memorable flood event," Andy Haner, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle told The Associated Press.
As small creeks became raging rivers and saturated earth threatened to slide Wednesday, sixty roads were reported closed statewide in 12 hours. Mount Rainier National Park shut its gates because of flooding concerns on the Nooksack River. Amtrak stopped north-south rail service.
All the state's major east-west mountain passes over the Cascades were closed because of avalanche danger. At Snoqualmie Pass before noon, an avalanche as wide as a football field crashed down the ski slopes, damaging eight houses, one severely, requiring the rescue of two occupants with minor injuries and the evacuation of everyone.
And by Wednesday evening, it was nowhere near being over.
The state Department of Transporation said that the Puyallup River Bridge adjacent to I-5 north of the Puyallup River near Fife near Tacoma could be closed after the end of the afternoon rush hour.
Though the exact timing of the closing near Fife remained elusive, computer models showed the freeway and surrounding areas might flood within "the next few hours," a 4 p.m. statement from the Washington Military Department's emergency management division said.
"Closing a major freeway in such a highly-populated, urban area is not something we take lightly," Assistant Chief Les Young of the patrol's field operations bureau said in a news release. "Our priority is to close the freeway early enough that we don't put anyone in harm's way."
The State Patrol and Transportation Department were plotting closure points near Fife while troopers were visually monitoring river levels. A traffic bottleneck in the Fife area limits alternate routes, with State Routes 167 and 512 the most likely options.
No estimates were given about how long the freeway could be closed and officials cautioned it could require patience, as engineers would need to inspect the roadbed and make repairs before any reopening.
In Orting about 10 miles southeast of Tacoma, fire trucks powered through the streets with loudspeakers advising everyone to leave the town and surrounding valley, home to about 26,000 people. Sandbags were placed around many downtown homes and businesses as the Puyallup River neared record levels.
"They expect the town of Orting to go under water," Pierce County sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer said, adding that the flooding could be the worst in more than a decade.
A levee in Orting at Bridge Road was being strengthened by the Seattle District of the Army Corps of Engineers, which supplied pumps, technical advice to local governments along with 56 flood fighters to help in seven river basins throughout Puget Sound.
The Corps said reservoirs behind the dams it operates were at low levels, ready to hold back high flows to help offset flooding from tributaries downstream of the dams.
In Centralia, the state Transportation Department was making emergency closure plans for Interstate 5, which was closed for days by flooding from the Chehalis River in 2007.
Throughout Washington, 62 highways were closed, including all passes in the Cascade Range. The National Weather Service issued flood warnings for 19 rivers in Western Washington, including the Nooksack, Skagit, Snohomish, Cedar, Nisqually, Puyallup and Chehalis. As of Wednesday afternoon 22 were at or above flood stage.
Flood warnings remained in effect through Friday in 14 counties in Western Washington and six in Eastern Washington, while 25 emergency operations centers were opened across the state.
An avalanche of snow and mud about 100 yards wide damaged some weekend recreation homes in the Hyak area east of Snoqualmie Pass, and state road crews were evacuated from a six-mile stretch along I-90 west of the pass.
Warmer temperatures and heavy rains from a powerful tropical storm were melting snow that was dumped on the mountains during a weekend storm. Ten 10 inches of snow melted in a 12-hour period at Snoqualmie Pass, about 50 miles east of Seattle, Haner said.
Rainfall totals for the 24 hours ending at 2 p.m. Wednesday included 6 inches at Marblemount in the Cascade foothills east of Mount Vernon; 4.70 inches at Glacier, near Mount Baker east of Bellingham; 4.59 inches at Paradise in Mount Rainier National Park, 3.63 inches in Olympia; and 1.64 inches at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
There were no immediate reports of injuries. A woman was rescued after being trapped briefly in a house that was hit by a mudslide and collapsed in Concrete, 70 miles northeast of Seattle. Town Fire Chief Rich Phillips said medics indicated the woman was OK.
In Orting, more than 20 people and a number of pets were rescued by boat Wednesday morning, Troyer said.
Diane Knowles of Eatonville said the first three to be taken to safety were her 81-year-old father-in-law and her brother- and sister-in law, who in past flooding arranged for the family to bring rescue boats.
"It came up so fast this time, there wasn't really time to think about it," she said.
Downstream along the Puyallup, Haner said the forecast was for a crest at a record 34.5 feet at 4 a.m. Thursday and for extensive flooding along the river to the mouth at the Port of Tacoma.
To protect animals, livestock shelters were opened in Pierce County at Frontier Park, Puyallup Fairgrounds, Evergreen Presbyterian Church, and Prairie Ridge Community Center at Bonney Lake, while a pet shelter was at the Sumner Veterinary Center.
Road closures, however, prevented Puget Sound Energy crews from responding to power outages east of Concrete, near Marblemount in the North Cascades, in Lynden and on Crystal Mountain.
PSE reported 500 households without power in Olympia.
In Snoqualmie, a town in the Cascade foothills 26 miles east of Seattle, kayakers paddled in the street as city officials urged residents in the flood plain of the Snoqualmie River to leave before they became trapped.
Volunteers gathered at a city park to stuff sandbags for residents to protect their homes.
June Garvin said she lived high on a ridge outside the danger area but wanted to help.
"The river came up so fast that for some people, sorry to say, sandbags aren't going to do a darn thing," Garvin said. "The water's going to get in if it wants to."
Rachel Myers stood across a flooded parking lot from her home and waited for her father to pick her up in a drift boat. She said her family has lived in the house since her great-grandmother built it, but they've decided this will be their last winter there.
"With flood after flood, it just gets more ruined every time," Myers said.
Spokane, already beset by more than 6 feet of snow in the past three weeks, was hit with rain and temperatures in the mid-40s. The weather service issued a flood warning for the area and cautioned that rain-saturated snow would place even more weight on rooftops that could collapse.
Icy roads and pools of melting snow snarled the morning commute and prompted Spokane schools to again close, giving 29,000 students a second unscheduled day off this week.
"Its an ice rink out there," school spokeswoman Terran Roloff said.
Avalanches and the risk of more slides closed Interstate 90, Washington's principal east-west route, through Snoqualmie Pass, as well as U.S. Highway 2 through Stevens Pass and U.S. 12 through White Pass.
The only road open between the two sides of the state within Washington was winding, two-lane Highway 14 through the Columbia River Gorge.
U.S. 97 was closed by slides at Blewett Pass, between Leavenworth and Ellensburg, and 200 to 300 feet of the northbound lane was washed away by flooding from Peshastin Creek, state Trooper Richard A. Magnussen said.
Several Western Washington counties declared emergencies due to mudslides and flooding. In Whatcom County, just south of the Canadian border, slides hit at least three homes, two in the Acme area, said Bellingham police Lt. Rick Sucee, a spokesman at the county's emergency operations center.
"Because of the heavy, heavy rain we've got urban flooding, we've got mudslides, we've got water over the road, we've got ditches full," Sucee told The Associated Press. "Small creeks are now rivers."
Record flooding closes I-5 near Chehalis; emergency declared in Tacoma
By MIKE BARBER AND DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL, P-I REPORTERS
More than 25,000 people were told to leave their homes in the Puyallup River Valley Wednesday, while floodwaters threatened to close Interstate 5 in two places and the city of Tacoma declared a state of emergency in the face of major-to-record flooding inundating most Western Washington river basins.
Shortly after 6 p.m., the State Patrol and state Department of Transportation closed a 20 mile stretch of I-5 in Lewis County south of Chehalis between mileposts 68 and 88.
Near Fife at the same time, water was beginning to creep over a levee breach and onto the freeway shortly before 6:30 p..m., with the right lane of I-5 southbound covered with water and closed for about 1 mile near Fife, though traffic was allowed to move through. Troopers and road crews monitored the freeway to plot closure points later in the evening.
"This is going to be a memorable flood event," Andy Haner, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle told The Associated Press.
As small creeks became raging rivers and saturated earth threatened to slide Wednesday, sixty roads were reported closed statewide in 12 hours. Mount Rainier National Park shut its gates because of flooding concerns on the Nooksack River. Amtrak stopped north-south rail service.
All the state's major east-west mountain passes over the Cascades were closed because of avalanche danger. At Snoqualmie Pass before noon, an avalanche as wide as a football field crashed down the ski slopes, damaging eight houses, one severely, requiring the rescue of two occupants with minor injuries and the evacuation of everyone.
And by Wednesday evening, it was nowhere near being over.
The state Department of Transporation said that the Puyallup River Bridge adjacent to I-5 north of the Puyallup River near Fife near Tacoma could be closed after the end of the afternoon rush hour.
Though the exact timing of the closing near Fife remained elusive, computer models showed the freeway and surrounding areas might flood within "the next few hours," a 4 p.m. statement from the Washington Military Department's emergency management division said.
"Closing a major freeway in such a highly-populated, urban area is not something we take lightly," Assistant Chief Les Young of the patrol's field operations bureau said in a news release. "Our priority is to close the freeway early enough that we don't put anyone in harm's way."
The State Patrol and Transportation Department were plotting closure points near Fife while troopers were visually monitoring river levels. A traffic bottleneck in the Fife area limits alternate routes, with State Routes 167 and 512 the most likely options.
No estimates were given about how long the freeway could be closed and officials cautioned it could require patience, as engineers would need to inspect the roadbed and make repairs before any reopening.
In Orting about 10 miles southeast of Tacoma, fire trucks powered through the streets with loudspeakers advising everyone to leave the town and surrounding valley, home to about 26,000 people. Sandbags were placed around many downtown homes and businesses as the Puyallup River neared record levels.
"They expect the town of Orting to go under water," Pierce County sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer said, adding that the flooding could be the worst in more than a decade.
A levee in Orting at Bridge Road was being strengthened by the Seattle District of the Army Corps of Engineers, which supplied pumps, technical advice to local governments along with 56 flood fighters to help in seven river basins throughout Puget Sound.
The Corps said reservoirs behind the dams it operates were at low levels, ready to hold back high flows to help offset flooding from tributaries downstream of the dams.
In Centralia, the state Transportation Department was making emergency closure plans for Interstate 5, which was closed for days by flooding from the Chehalis River in 2007.
Throughout Washington, 62 highways were closed, including all passes in the Cascade Range. The National Weather Service issued flood warnings for 19 rivers in Western Washington, including the Nooksack, Skagit, Snohomish, Cedar, Nisqually, Puyallup and Chehalis. As of Wednesday afternoon 22 were at or above flood stage.
Flood warnings remained in effect through Friday in 14 counties in Western Washington and six in Eastern Washington, while 25 emergency operations centers were opened across the state.
An avalanche of snow and mud about 100 yards wide damaged some weekend recreation homes in the Hyak area east of Snoqualmie Pass, and state road crews were evacuated from a six-mile stretch along I-90 west of the pass.
Warmer temperatures and heavy rains from a powerful tropical storm were melting snow that was dumped on the mountains during a weekend storm. Ten 10 inches of snow melted in a 12-hour period at Snoqualmie Pass, about 50 miles east of Seattle, Haner said.
Rainfall totals for the 24 hours ending at 2 p.m. Wednesday included 6 inches at Marblemount in the Cascade foothills east of Mount Vernon; 4.70 inches at Glacier, near Mount Baker east of Bellingham; 4.59 inches at Paradise in Mount Rainier National Park, 3.63 inches in Olympia; and 1.64 inches at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
There were no immediate reports of injuries. A woman was rescued after being trapped briefly in a house that was hit by a mudslide and collapsed in Concrete, 70 miles northeast of Seattle. Town Fire Chief Rich Phillips said medics indicated the woman was OK.
In Orting, more than 20 people and a number of pets were rescued by boat Wednesday morning, Troyer said.
Diane Knowles of Eatonville said the first three to be taken to safety were her 81-year-old father-in-law and her brother- and sister-in law, who in past flooding arranged for the family to bring rescue boats.
"It came up so fast this time, there wasn't really time to think about it," she said.
Downstream along the Puyallup, Haner said the forecast was for a crest at a record 34.5 feet at 4 a.m. Thursday and for extensive flooding along the river to the mouth at the Port of Tacoma.
To protect animals, livestock shelters were opened in Pierce County at Frontier Park, Puyallup Fairgrounds, Evergreen Presbyterian Church, and Prairie Ridge Community Center at Bonney Lake, while a pet shelter was at the Sumner Veterinary Center.
Road closures, however, prevented Puget Sound Energy crews from responding to power outages east of Concrete, near Marblemount in the North Cascades, in Lynden and on Crystal Mountain.
PSE reported 500 households without power in Olympia.
In Snoqualmie, a town in the Cascade foothills 26 miles east of Seattle, kayakers paddled in the street as city officials urged residents in the flood plain of the Snoqualmie River to leave before they became trapped.
Volunteers gathered at a city park to stuff sandbags for residents to protect their homes.
June Garvin said she lived high on a ridge outside the danger area but wanted to help.
"The river came up so fast that for some people, sorry to say, sandbags aren't going to do a darn thing," Garvin said. "The water's going to get in if it wants to."
Rachel Myers stood across a flooded parking lot from her home and waited for her father to pick her up in a drift boat. She said her family has lived in the house since her great-grandmother built it, but they've decided this will be their last winter there.
"With flood after flood, it just gets more ruined every time," Myers said.
Spokane, already beset by more than 6 feet of snow in the past three weeks, was hit with rain and temperatures in the mid-40s. The weather service issued a flood warning for the area and cautioned that rain-saturated snow would place even more weight on rooftops that could collapse.
Icy roads and pools of melting snow snarled the morning commute and prompted Spokane schools to again close, giving 29,000 students a second unscheduled day off this week.
"Its an ice rink out there," school spokeswoman Terran Roloff said.
Avalanches and the risk of more slides closed Interstate 90, Washington's principal east-west route, through Snoqualmie Pass, as well as U.S. Highway 2 through Stevens Pass and U.S. 12 through White Pass.
The only road open between the two sides of the state within Washington was winding, two-lane Highway 14 through the Columbia River Gorge.
U.S. 97 was closed by slides at Blewett Pass, between Leavenworth and Ellensburg, and 200 to 300 feet of the northbound lane was washed away by flooding from Peshastin Creek, state Trooper Richard A. Magnussen said.
Several Western Washington counties declared emergencies due to mudslides and flooding. In Whatcom County, just south of the Canadian border, slides hit at least three homes, two in the Acme area, said Bellingham police Lt. Rick Sucee, a spokesman at the county's emergency operations center.
"Because of the heavy, heavy rain we've got urban flooding, we've got mudslides, we've got water over the road, we've got ditches full," Sucee told The Associated Press. "Small creeks are now rivers."
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