The van took over an hour and a half to row home through the flooded Seattle roads. The rain came down something awful tonight. It turns out Seattle’s roads are not designed for heavy rain. While that may sound counterintuitive, remember, Seattle is not known for its heavy rains, only for its constant rains. People sometimes describe these rains as “misty.” I’ve heard this more than once—although both times it was from people trying to convince me and others that they should move to Seattle. I didn’t (and still don’t) believe this myth of “misty rain,” not for a moment. The rains were heavy, the type that I sometime hear described as “raining cats and dogs.” I didn’t see any animals falling from the sky, but had I seen them, I would not have been surprised.

Besides the rains, the winds have been outrageous tonight, topping out at ninety miles per hour. There were some worries in the van that the floating bridges would close. As the name suggests, the two bridges that connect the eastside (i.e., the suburbs of Seattle including where I work) with Seattle float on Lake Washington at their lowest points. With strong winds the lake water sometimes swells and swallows these sections of the floating bridges. Not surprisingly the authorities close the bridges when this happens. Luckily, the bridges did not close tonight. For a better view of what I’m complaining about, see the Seattle traffic map. If you scroll down to the middle of the map, you’ll see the two bridges with the words “Lake Washington” between them. The colors of the road segments indicate the traffic: green is clear, yellow is worrisome, red is slow, and black is terrible. The lake isn’t huge and the van does have the option of driving around the lake to return to Seattle. That option, however, adds an additional thirty minutes to the commute. It was a wash whether it would have helped our commute today. We decided to brave the bridges, and while the bridges were not too bad, many of the roads leading from the bridge to home were flooded.

The rain is still coming down. It’s a strange downpour. It sounds like every ten minutes there is a bucketful of rain dumped on top of the Castle. It takes a while for the bucket to empty itself, and when the final drops falls, another bucket is dumped on the Castle. If nothing else, it’s an interesting night here. The electricity has been flashing, which I think is causing the Castle’s heat to turn off. This may be what caused the electricity to turn off while I was away in NYC. When I turn off the heat, turn it back on, and wait the five minutes (the wait period for the thermostat to restart the heater), the heat works again. I’m hoping this is not a problem with the Castle’s heating system. Since I’m in the hoping mood, I also hope that our spot sealant work Doolies and I did on the leaking porches hold through this rainy onslaught.

Okay, enough on the weather. It’s wet and thundery and miserable. But I’m hopeful and while not exactly warm, I am hiding under my green blanket with my laptop keeping my lap awfully toasty. That’s something at least.