Wow, It's Bad Out There

Up here near Green Lake, it's raining as hard as we've ever seen it rain in Seattle. Just pelting. The drive home--through skies so dark it was essentially pitch black--was laborious, luckily we were going against Seahawks traffic, but everyone was going about 35 and leaving plenty of following distance. Some people are just hopeless, though. To the driver of the black Honda Civic--you might want to turn your lights on.

The lights are flickering--better get this up. But first--KIRO's Andy Wappler explains why we may or may not have dangerous winds tonight, with an utterly incomprehensible baseball analogy.:

Even a small difference in a storm's intensity or path can have a huge impact on the ultimate wind speeds through your neighborhood.

As an example, picture a baseball player throwing a pitch. The throw can appear to be right on target, going straight into the catcher's mitt -- and yet the umpire calls it a "ball" and not a "strike" just because it was an inch or two off of home plate. The same kind of precision plays into whether a day is merely breezy, or takes down big trees. Even a slight difference in the storm's course can take us from a blustery day, to one where the power is out and giant evergreen trees topple.