EV: Stupidly going where SUV's fear to tread

[Ever Victorious]

OK... so we've got a bit of a storm here. Tons of rain, lots of wind, lots of standing water all over the roads.

I was desperate to go pick up my wife, so I drove down a flooded portion of a street that everyone else (except one single SUV) was too afraid to go into.

Luckily, it was only about 6 inches of water and I was able to drive right through it. Still, stupid me for trying it without knowing exactly.

[cireecnop1]

glad you said it. You got lucky EV.

[litlnemo]

I went down into Rainier Valley during the flash flooding (not knowing it was flooding), to try to avoid the Seahawks traffic. There was a lot of water on the road and in the sheeting rain it was actually hard to see where it was safe to drive. I pulled into McDonalds and ran inside and bought a filet o'fish to go, then back to the car... and while I was in McDs, every exit from the parking lot had flooded and a car was abandoned on the side street. I was freaking out a bit. The lot was higher ground but not that high, and the rain was like the wrath of God or something. I've never seen flooding like this in Seattle, and this was fast, too. (More than an inch of rain in an hour. And it seemed like more.) I watched some other drivers exit the lot through the water and decided to follow their path, as close to the edge of the water as possible. And the Versa and I got through just fine, but I was really nervous. As I went north on Rainier the ground got higher and the rain slowed so it was easier, but from there it took me 2 hours to get to Pier 70 (roughly); I was rather late for work, even though I left much earlier than usual. (For non-locals: it was a 3-4 mile drive in those 2 hours.)

I was worried later that the V would get damaged in the storm. We don't have a garage, and there was siding and gutters coming off the house in the wind, along with a big pile of shingles. But no harm done.

Here is what I learned, though: the Bluetooth phone thing doesn't work so well when there is rain like that coming down. It couldn't understand me unless I yelled. And when it did understand me, the cell network was full anyway... I have never seen rain like that in Seattle. It rains hard here occasionally, but not like that.

The water was so intense in some areas that a woman here drowned in her own basement. Truly scary. Trees down, etc. And that was *before* the winds started.

[proxim2020]

That's one of the reason why down here we don't have basements. The Every house is built on a slab. We get storms like that a few times a year. The last one we had was in August. Back then, there was about 5.25 inches of rain falling an hour. Here's a link to some pics I took back then while I was over my parents place. This was considered light flooding for that day.

http://www.texastinkle.com/Pic....html

I don't think going through the water was stupid. When all you can see is the hood of the car above water and you go for it......That's what you call stupid. That's pretty common here.

[Ever Victorious]

The kind of flooding/rain we've been having lately is epic for this region. We have shattered MANY rain records, even ones that have been standing as long as there have been white settlers in this region... back in the late 1800's.

Because of how hilly our region is (we don't flatten our hills, we build on them... and we're nothing BUT hills), we normally get really good drainage... but when all of the storm drains get blocked or are so overwhelmed that they're actually feeding water BACK, then it floods in unusual manners.

In a somewhat ironic twist... Everett usually gets pounded harder than Seattle by almost every weather system, because it is north of what's known as the Convergence Zone... this protection for Seattle is caused by the Olympic mountains on the peninsula. Everett, while still south of the northern line of the Olympics, still gets pounded because of the way the winds twist. Anyway, this time around, Everett was spared the wrath of the system. Spotty power outages and a few downed trees. Seattle was hit pretty hard, but the eastside... well, their entire power grid was basically annihilated. For example, Kirkland still has no power... after more than a full day of crews working on it. This is NOT a rural area, this is one of the more major suburbs that feeds Seattle's workforce.

Puget Sound Energy stated that they lost something like 85 of their 120 main feeder lines to our region at the height of the storm, and by noon yesterday they still had 65 out.

Over 1 million homes and businesses without power in the greater puget sound area, including 700,000 PSE customers (2/3 of their grid). Oddly, only 130,000 with Snohomish Co. PUD were out. most of those were on Whidbey and Camano islands, which have basically no protection from storms.

Litlnemo - did you see any of the K5 news coverage of the BMW that tried to get on southbound I-405 in Kirkland? And the guys were sitting on the roof because the water was up to the bottom of the windows? I got to that intersection right after they actually drove into the water, and saw them scrambling out the sunroof to get on top of the car. It also blocked traffic a bit (the pool) so I got to stick around and watch the first responders work a little. The first vehicle on scene was the fire commander's SUV... HE didn't even want to venture into water that deep... he waited for an actual fire truck. That was one pool I wasn't about to venture into. I went around that one. Way around.

[cireecnop1]

A few months ago, there was this wicked storm here. there is this one intersection in town (w29th st and the I 25 exit) that literally fills up with water maybe 20ft? well back to the story this older woman wasn't paying attention to the closed road and drove her Jeep right into it, the news was there already reporting on the flood and happen to watch her drive in. Her jeep sank immediately but someone jumped in and got her out.

crazy people Im telling you.

[litlnemo]

Litlnemo - did you see any of the K5 news coverage of the BMW that tried to get on southbound I-405 in Kirkland?

Nope, but our power was out too for a while. Here is a picture I took during the Rainier Avenue flooding while I was trying to decide how to get out of the Mc Donald's lot. It's a phone picture so not all that great but it gives you some idea. There was water much deeper in some places, but not right there where I was.

As you mentioned, this weather is not at all normal for us. I have been through one equivalent windstorm in my lifetime -- the 1993 Inauguration Day storm, which hit Thurston County very hard (where I was living at the time). But I've never seen the hard rain and flash flood like we had Thursday. The rain we had probably doesn't seem like much to Texans, but here it's a record-setting event. We don't have the kind of drainage system that is intended to deal with that kind of heavy rain.

The amount of rain we had in November was record-setting as well so the ground is probably saturated. I know trees started falling here in Seattle during the rain on Thursday -- that was before the wind started. There were mudslides and trees down from the wet earth.

That reminds me, I just filled the V tank for the first time... but didn't bother looking at the mileage because with the 2mph or less driving I had to do on Thursday night to get to work, plus all the time I spent idling in the car showing off its features to my friends, I am sure the mileage for that tank sucked.

[OKVersa]

Hubby comes in after changing the oil for the first time and says, "I have something to tell you about the Versa."

He looked so somber, I almost panicked.



He said, "The underneath side of the Versa is completely sealed shut. Outside of the engine compartment, every seam, every bolt, every hole - completely sealed. I have never seen anything like it before. If it wasn't for the engine, that thing could float!"

Now, my husband used to own his own gas station (back when they were SERVICE stations) and had changed the oil on so many cars he could do it in his sleep. He said he never saw such good work on the bottom of a car before.

We don't have a lot of flooding here - in fact it doesn't rain - but it's good information to pass on. I would, however, never recommend people drive through flooded areas.

[Cowboys Fan 87]

"The underneath side of the Versa is completely sealed shut. Outside of the engine compartment, every seam, every bolt, every hole - completely sealed. I have never seen anything like it before. If it wasn't for the engine, that thing could float!"

Hmm.....that would be a custom job right there, then leave work, drive to the lake for fishing, drive into the lake and fish....talk about a time saver!

[motoguy128]

Hubby comes in after changing the oil for the first time and says, "I have something to tell you about the Versa."

He looked so somber, I almost panicked.



He said, "The underneath side of the Versa is completely sealed shut. Outside of the engine compartment, every seam, every bolt, every hole - completely sealed. I have never seen anything like it before. If it wasn't for the engine, that thing could float!"

Thanks for the observation. That helps explain why the car fogs up so easily, especially frost on the inside from melted snow on the mats evaporating, then condensing and freezing on the glass as the temperatures drop.

I think Nissan did this to reduce interior noise. Every small air leak can create noise proiblems. The down side is that sometiems the doors and rear hatch is hard to shut.