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The Three P’s: Planning, Preparing and … Panic!

Winter still seems far away…but it’s not so far away that you can’t start planning for one of the big storms we’ve had.   In the few years we’ve lived on Beach Drive, we’ve been pummeled 3 times with waves, salt and wind. 

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We’ve had some very nice neighbors who have offered to help “bail us out” and we’ve had other neighbors who were not well prepared and wanted to borrow our pumps (ummm….we were kind of using them).

Here is a quick list, if you live on the “water side” of things you may want to consider picking up before we’re in “storm season” and they’re sold out.   (We have Honda’s for our generator and pumps).

  • Generators 
  • Pumps (we have two and it so far that’s paid off because it seems like every time one has decided to quit on us). UPDATE: Aurora Rents is open on Sundays and have pumps available to rent should you flood like we do!
  • Gas for generators and pumps
  • Big Thermos full of coffee (maybe Spanish Coffee)
  • Tide Charts to read along with the upcoming Puget Sound marine forecast (links on the right column of BDB under “Swell Links”).
  • Tall rubber boots
  • Neoprene gloves

You can always try renting pumps and generators.   It use to be more convenient when the rental place was located on Fauntleroy instead of SODO and the storm needs to hit when the rental place is open for biz. (See note above regarding Aurora Rents).

We have a neighbor friend who keeps a “crash kit” of warm clothing ready for when it’s time to go battle the wind and waves. 

This is just a few ideas in the event of a storm with high tides.    What to do if we’re out of power for 5 plus days in the winter is enough for another post at a later date.

UPDATE: Since writing this post, you can connect with Beach Drive Blog with Twitter @BeachDriveBlog or Facebook fb.com/beachdriveblog using your cell phones should we lose power. 

Barking Dog Report: On Watch for Friday

EDITORS NOTE: Please scroll to the bottom of this post for updates.

If you’re a long time reader of Beach Drive Blog, then you’re most likely familiar with “the Barking Dog Report”. We issue a “Barking Dog Report” when we think there is a strong possibility that our Beach Drive home may flood from waves coming over the bulkhead. Sometimes, much like a neighbors barking dog (and the weatherman), we may be off and there is no issue. However, we think it’s always good to prepare for worse case scenario for those few times that flooding does occur.

For this report, we’re more of a concerned dog that’s sniffing the air for what may come this Friday. What has our ears pulled back this morning? Check out the current data from Wind Alert.


You can see by the bottom graph for this week that we’re going to be in for some stormy, windy weather… however, if Friday’s current forecast holds true, we could have gusts as high as 62 mph around 1:00 pm!

High tide is predicted to be 11.72 feet at 10:12 am on Friday, which is when the wind really appears to start picking up based on this morning’s chart from Wind Alert. At 1:00 p.m., tides are predicted to be around 10 feet…but with winds that strong, waves should be pretty intense.

Again, I hope we’re barking for nothing, just like your neighbor’s dog. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared for a big storm…just in case!

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PS PS: Stay tuned! Weather is such a moving target! As 12:54 pm (a few hours since publishing this post) Wind Alert is showing the strongest gust on Friday to be “only” 46 mph at 4:00 am.

UPDATE: As of 8:00 a.m. December 12, 2018, it looks like Friday will be a non-event. Thursday looks stormy but nothing like what we had originally shared on this post. 🙂