The Storm That Wasn’t (and some that were)

Can anyone remember a storm that was so hyped that in the end delivered so little? From October 13 to 15 the Pacific Northwest was supposed to have the storm of the century rivaling the 1962 Columbus Day storm. The biggest wallop was supposed to happen late afternoon into the evening of October 15.

Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, there was a smaller windstorm that didn’t get much hype. During that storm several trees (willow and madrone), several large branches (Douglas fir), plus a large section of Juniper came down. I cleared the trails prior to and in anticipation of the BIG ONE.

Willow across the trail

Madrone snapped off

How do big storms affect Yellow Island? The biggest problem is having a boat on a mooring. Yellow has two moorings, one on the north side, one on the south. I have my personal boat on one and the TNC boat on the other. When a storm of this predicted magnitude  (70 mph gusts) is imminent, I take one boat to the TNC slip at the Port of Friday Harbor and use the mooring in the lee of the island for the other boat. In fact, any time the wind gets above 30 mph it’s a good idea not to have a boat on the windward side of the island. Below is a photo of my boat in a 60+ mph wind in August, 2015. You can see there are a plenty of places a mooring could fail in such situations. That day I got lucky.

 

Boat at mooring in 60+ mph gusts

In fact I got lucky twice that day. The mooring didn’t fail and the storm delivered a nice piece of cedar lawn furniture that wasn’t too much the worse for wear given it had rolled around in the surf and intertidal for quite some time.

Cedar bench, a gift from the sea.

And if the boat did break loose, what does the beach where it would end up look like?  The following photos are from a storm on November 12, 2007 near high tide. Gusts were again in the 65+ mph range. This storm didn't receive any where near the hype of  October 22 event.

So knowing all this might happen on October 15, I did in fact tow a boat to Friday Harbor on Friday afternoon. But Saturday morning a couple things happened. First they were backing off on the 70 mph gust but still saying it could be a damaging storm. Second, they kept changing the direction of the storm through various models from NE to SE. At one point the prediction was the storm would start from the NE and over several hours move to the SE. All the time the winds were to be above 50 mph gusting to 60 mph. What that meant is there was no way the boat could be out of the storm the entire time. Instead of being the Harry Truman of Yellow Island, I decided it would be best to get both boats to safe moorage. Fortunately, I had several friends offer places to stay on San Juan Island so that is where I weathered the storm that wasn’t.

When people got up Sunday morning, peak winds the night before were ‘only’ in the 40+ mph range, enough to create some nice surf and do something the previous portions of the storm hadn’t done, rearrange the landing beach at Yellow. Since last winter, the shape of the beach was a gradual slope up to a 20 foot wide flat area where I could leave the dinghy above the high tide. After the storm, the flat area was gone and the slope lead straight to the driftwood at the base of the vegetated bluff. Now there is no way to get the dinghy out of the water at high tide. That means strictly using the north mooring and beach on that side for the dinghy. until the beach is again re-arranged.

SE landing beach at a foot and a half below high tide

In the above photo you can tell the wet driftwood, floating at the last high tide, from the dry driftwood. Clearly there is no safe place for dinghy here.

And how does the cabin fair in these storms? It has survived almost 70 years of storms and I feel totally safe in it. But it is exciting. The following photo was taken during the 2011 Thanksgiving Day storm. Again there were 65+ mph gusts and this was at high tide.

Storm side of the cabin protected nicely by the rock outcropping.

Bottomline: This was a good drill for when the big one does happen. And while the storm would have been exciting to experience, we really dodged a bullet with the damage the storm could have caused.