whether the weather influences or not...

I'm looking at this lovely little front that's offshore. I see we had 20 mph winds with 45-50 mph gusts yesterday, last night and today... I see all of this and wonder... WHAT'S THE WEATHER FORECAST FOR SUNDAY????!!!!

Not there... not in Detroit (aka: Pittsburgh. The Detroit mayor turned the city over to Jerome Bettis and family. How nice!). I could care less about the weather in Detroit. It's a covered stadium. For craps sakes you don't get too screwed up by weather in covered stadiums.

No, I was thinking more about what the weather was going to be HERE on Sunday. You see, when we have really rainy seasons in our fine state of Washington... when we have those really rainy seasons "up here" like we are this year, well the rain "loosens up" the soil around the root wads of our magnificent Douglas Fir, Hemlock, Spruce and Western Red Cedar trees (not to mention those oaks, alders, maples and others). Those root wads get saturated, the winds start to blow a bit, the trees are a bit top heavy from all of their magnificent needles and POW!... they become a part of your living room. Either way, when the wind blows during the rainy season "up here" we get one heckuva lot of trees across the powerlines which, in effect renders power to homes ineffective.

Olympia's rather protected... being as we're in the southern end of the "Puget Sound", surrounded by a really young coastal mountain range to our west, the majestic Olympic Mountains to our northwest and the foothills of the grand Cascade Mountains to our east. Because of this unique topography we're pretty protected from those coastal winds. However, the winds we do get, the winds that do blow in and damage things... you know, those damaging winds... well they're rare in Olympia and are usually out of the southwest.

So, to play it safe I go to my favorite weather site Weather Underground(10 bucks a year. I subscribe to it) and I check out the weather for Saturday and Sunday using the zipcode 98503. I see a storm front approaching for Friday night/Saturday that's packing sustained winds in the mid 20 mph's with gusts in the 40 and 50 mph... out of the SOUTH WEST!. Now, that's not a HUGE storm but with all of our record breaking rainfall we've been getting this year well, it wouldn't have to be a HUGE storm... not even a not so HUGE storm.

Bottom line... I've waited 30 years to see our 'HAWKS go to the Super Bowl. It would be my friggin' luck that the day the Super Bowl finally gets here with our 'HAWKS in it (February 05, 2006)... that day... well, because of these little storms... THAT DAY (Sunday, February 05, 2006) our power is off... off because some magnificent Douglas Fir is laying across the lines somewhere, someplace... pushed into those lines the night before by a "passing" Pacific storm.

I'm gonna find a generator!

GO 'HAWKS!!!