The Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006
Monday, March 05, 2007
NOWCAST - The weekend skies were slow to clear but eventually they did and we had a brief period of fair weather Saturday afternoon and evening and again on Sunday. Temperatures would have reach 60 degrees or better Saturday but too many cloys. Sunday saw a few areas reach 60 degrees, I had 59 degrees here in Salmon Creek. Another nice day today with more clouds and 60 degrees again. The rest of the week looks like we could see some rain at times with cooler temperatures Wednesday as a cold front moves inland and more snow in the mountains. All in all, not a real stormy week.
OUTCAST - The National Weather Service in Seattle finally released the winning name of their contest to name the December 14, 2006 windstorm that hit western Washington. The following are their words:
The mid-December Wind Storm has been named!!
The Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006
- Hanukkah Eve started at sunset on the 14th and ended at sunset on the 15th, which was the beginning of Hanukkah.
- There were 15 fatalities as a result of the storm. Four were directly involved with the storm, three from fallen trees and one drowning. The other eleven were indirect fatalities after the storm, eight from carbon monoxide poisoning, two electrocutions from downed power lines, and one in a house fire started by a candle used for light.
- The storm blew down thousands of trees, knocked power out to close to 1.5 million customers, damaged hundreds of structures and homes, and injured dozens of people. 275 people were treated in hospitals for carbon monoxide poisoning following the storm.
- The primary purpose of selecting a name for this storm was so residents would more easily remember this storm for years and decades to come, much like other major wind storms such as the Columbus Day Storm of 1962, the Hood Canal Bridge Wind Storm of 1979 and the 1993 Inauguration Day Wind Storm. Remembering these storms helps people better prepare for future storms.
- The Name the Wind Storm contest ran for two weeks:
- 6255 emails were submitted for the contest, close to 20 emails per hour.
- From those 6255 emails, nearly 8000 wind storm name nominations were submitted. There were 5732 unique names!!
- Though the targeted audience for the contest was residents of western
- Nominations were diverse and imaginative, yet many fell into these major categories:
-
- Downed Trees
- Power Outages
- A committee of NWS Seattle staff members and dedicated student volunteers plowed through all the emails -- hours and hours of work.
- The wind storm name Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006 was chosen since it best met the date of the event and reflected the major impact of the storm.
Hanukkah Eve (Erev Hanukkah) started at sunset on the 14th and continued through sunset on the 15th.
Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, involves the lighting of candles for eight days.
The first candle is lit on Hanukkah Eve, the night before the holiday starts.
Hanukkah is a holiday with broad recognition.
- The winning wind storm name was submitted by 39 people. The winner representing the group was drawn at random from the 39 names. His name was Clyde Hill of Burien, Washington (located just south of
For a good report of the windstorm for Oregon, go to the Oregon Climate Service.
For other details go to my archives for December and scroll down to December 13-15.
Folks in San Diego are trying to find out if global climate change is causing their weather to be weird and unusual. So far, they cannot find a climatologist to tell them exactly why the weather is what it is. Or whether man is causing the sometimes wacky weather in that region. Interesting. Read here.
A Russian scientist says global warming is not man caused but is the result of solar radiation and both Mars and Earth are warming up. Interesting too his report was left out of the IPCC report. Read here.
Al Gore might have won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, but the film is very misleading and he has got the relationship between CO2 and climate change the wrong way round says Martin Durkin, director of a new TV documentary about to air in the UK. The Great Global Warming Swindle is the title of this program which faces off with Oscar Gore's documentary and proves just the opposite with interviews with scientists and climatologists. Boy, this should stir up the House of Lords. I hope we in the US will get a chance to view this. Perhaps those that have cable and the BBC channel will. Stay tuned and to read the UK article, click here.
View from Mukilteo looking west towards the Olympics in last week's snowstorm in Puget sound.
More of the February 28/March 1 snowstorm in the north sound, this is in Everett. For some really great snow photos of the snowstorm, and I mean really good, go to KOMO TV site.
-- posted by Pat Timm @ 2:00 AM,
