Weather

A view of some of the storm debris at Mad Dog's kennels.

Earlier in the month I made a lightning pre-Christmas trip to the UK to organise some collaborations. While there I survived a tornado in North London and radiocactive contamination (I hope -at least I don't appear to be glowing, yet) from polonium 210 at UCL Hospital where the unfortunate Mr. Litvinenko met his recent demise. On the night of my return to Seattle I was, in a slightly self-congratulatory manner, I admit, contemplating my near misses before retiring to bed quite exhausted. I was woken up at 2.00am by the most violent wind storm and noticed that the power had gone out. The next morning, still without power, I surveyed the damage. It was quite unbelievable. Trees were down everywhere and millions of people were without electricity in Washington State, a wretched situation that continued for over week for some unfortunates. It took me a whole weekend to clean up the mess in my garden and heaven knows how long it will take me to dispose of the piles of debris. Oh Lord, I promise I won't be smug ever again...!