Weather Awareness Is Critical In The Northwest

photo © Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike

Washington State weather, it just never ceases to amaze me. Despite being truly fortunate not to have to deal with those nasty snow storms in the East, here in the Northwest, you might say that our otherwise wet weather has been a little wetter than usual over this past week. How bad was it? Let me suffice it to say that I am merely a few miles away from what some people are calling the ‘danger zone‘.

As Rachel points out at the 2 minute, 8 second mark in the national forecast for Dec 3rd, people in this area needed to be ready.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/bk7f4RfUCBw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

And despite Rachel making the alert known yet again to Northwest residents, this time via a webcam and youCaster, many of us were clearly not ready. Today however, I am seeing some sunshine with sun breaks. According to the hour by hour live forecast, I will be able to finally get some of the mess cleaned up. Thankfully, I am far enough away from Portland flooding as my concerns were pretty minor.

But let me tell you something, living in a possible flood zone, you are INSANE not to have a mobile alert warning you on your preferred mobile device. It’s the best $3 a month you will ever spend, believe me. Beats waking up to wet carpet and flooded garage, like many people just a few miles away were dealing with. Sometimes just knowing ahead of time allows people to better prepare. All and all, my wife and I were pretty lucky. Further south in Oregon however, things were getting really frightening…

Think weather reports from your TV and newspaper are good enough? Think again. Live, local and accurate – live alerts matter.

[tags]weather alerts, weather, local weather, weather crisis[/tags]