SEATTLE — Sunday marks the 63rd anniversary of the historic Columbus Day storm. This storm was catastrophic to the Pacific Northwest and remains the most powerful non-tropical windstorm to ever hit the lower 48 states in history.
Winds reached 100 mph, but had gusts equivalent to a category 4 hurricane at 150mph.
“The Columbus Day Storm was the grandaddy of all windstorms. All other windstorms are compared to the Columbus Day storm,” said former National Weather Service meteorologist Ted Buhner. “It had power outages from the San Francisco Bay area into British Columbia. Unfortunately, 46 fatalities, hundreds were injured, thousands of buildings were destroyed, and it blew down 15 billion board feet of timber.”
That is enough lumber to build about one million houses.
The storm originated from Typhoon Freda that lost strength as it moved through the Pacific Ocean, but then transitioned to a powerful low pressure system that blasted the costs of Oregan and Washington state.
But Buhner warns that something like this could happen again and this anniversary is a good reminder to always be prepared.
“In western Washington in 1962, there were 1.25 million residents. Today, it is close to 7 million, so imagine that same storm occurring today. What would be the impacts? The impacts on transportation, like the floating bridges, all the trees, the infrastructure, the power sources, the communication sources, many of them would be taken offline,” said Buhner.
As we move into colder weather months, it’s a good time to stock up on extra water, non-perishable food items, and extra batteries. Alternate forms of communication if possible and always a little cash on hand. When power is off, credit card machines will not work, so having smaller bills to pay for milk and bread for instance, may come in handy.
트위터 공유: 콜럼버스 데이 폭풍 63년 기억 재해 대비 필수