Wednesday, January 24, 2018

High winds and Tsunami Warning this week

This has been a bad week for us trying to sleep at night.  All Saturday night, the winds were howling with gusts forecast up to 50 and it sure felt like it.  With the wind out of the Southeast the first it hits after crossing the bay is Forever Exploring, so we were bouncing around pretty good all night.  Wendy and I both like our spot out on the breakwater dock, the view is wonderful and with the ferries going by and the float plane dock next to us, there is plenty of action.  But when the wind picks up, we get it, especially wind from the South.

Then at 2:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, Tom woke us up.  They had been alerted to the Tsunami warning in Alaska.  After several very thick headed minutes trying to wake up, we starting to search online all that we could.  We were on the southern end of the warning area and a sea buoy had registered a 30 foot wave.  So we started making plans to evacuate the boat and go to higher ground.  I considered shoving off, leaving the marina and going out in the bay, but the concern for huge currents full of debris helped us decide otherwise.  The all ewe could do was wait and see what developed.  The potential wave would take three hours to arrive.

At about 3:00, I began reading Facebook posts about my friend, Marcus Prince from college.  He had passed away the day before from the flu and double pneumonia.  It's very sad, but I was so moved by the many lives that he had touched in meaningful ways, so I spent rest of the night reading about Marc.  By 5:00 the Tsunami warning had been lifted.

It's difficult to feel the wind from this picture.  On the other side of Forever Exploring and the breakwater dock, the waves were pretty rambunctious. 
Friday Harbor is just of the bottom edge of the red tsunami warning area.

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