The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

With the passage of Winter Solstice, we will start gaining more daylight. It’s not that noticeable; it’s measured initially in about one minute each day, and that’s at sunset. When we arrive at mid-January, we begin to see good gain in daylight on both ends — sunrise and sunset. Example: Dec. 22, 2017 — sunrise at 7:43 a.m., sunset at 4:06 p.m.; Jan. 15, 2018 — sunrise at 7:41 a.m., sunset at 4:31 p.m. Think of all the things you can get done outside with all the extra light. (Insert smiley face here.)

Droughts of many types, severe long-term as well as short duration, have hit Washington state on a regular basis. Droughts cause havoc with the agricultural industry, have impacted hydroelectric production and create issues with available water. Generally, the smaller energy-producing dams can be rendered almost useless during a severe drought that disrupts water flow on smaller rivers.

Nearly 90 years ago, Tacoma, Washington, lost much of its power due to drought conditions. During this period, Tacoma received the bulk of its electrical power from dams on the Nisqually and Skokomish rivers. By late 1929, Tacoma was in critical condition, having lost a good amount of electrical power. The Cascade Paper Company was shut down, and Fort Lewis turned off some power too, all to help with the power shortage. Both were big users of electrical energy. The city sent an appeal to then-president Herbert Hoover seeking assistance. The president passed the request to the U.S. Navy, which responded negatively. Though, with some prodding, there were renegotiations and the Navy reconsidered. Those negotiations resulted in the movement of the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier, from Bremerton to Tacoma. Both the Puget Sound Power & Light and Seattle City Light companies opposed this move, as they were still producing power.

You may ask what a Navy ship has to do with drought and electricity? Well, the Lexington was ultimately connected to a portion of Tacoma’s power grid via 12 large cables. There were circuit breakers and a bank of transformers set up to accept the power being produced by the Lexington’s large turbo-electric propulsion system. The ship housed four General Electric turbo generators rated at 35,200 kilowatts. Ultimately, more than 4.5 million kilowatt-hours were produced for about a month, meeting about a quarter of the city’s needs. Eventually, rain and melting snow created enough water flow to reactivate the dams that had been silenced by drought. The USS Lexington (CV-2) was lost during the Battle of the Coral Sea. Another carrier, and what became the second USS Lexington, whose construction started out as the Cabot (CV-16), replaced the lost ship.

The December weather results at the home weather station saw more snowfall. Here are the numbers: Total snowfall was 3.3 inches with the deepest on the 30th, with 1.7 inches. Overall mean snowfall for December is 4.9 inches. Total precipitation was 0.65 inches, with nearly half arriving with the deepest snowfall. Overall mean precipitation for December is 1.38 inches. Looks like we fell considerably behind the means for December. The high temperature for the month was 41.9˚F (all-time high was 58˚F in 2007) on the 19th. The low was 8.6˚F (all time low was -16˚F in 1968) on the 23rd. The mean for this December was 26.7˚F. The overall mean for December for our area is 29.3˚F.

Finally, let’s visit the weather statistics for calendar year 2017. I’ll start with temperatures: the low was -1.0˚F on Jan. 22. The high was on July 22 at 103.8˚F. Total precipitation was 13.39 inches, well over our annual mean of 10.75 inches (the annual mean has gone up 0.2 inches over the past few years). Snowfall measured 28.7 inches; the annual mean is 19.8 inches. We ended with a good amount of water for the year 2017.