After a tepid and bland winter where La Nina has hardly made an appearance, an Arctic blast is on tap this week. The Seattle-Bellevue area may see the coldest low temperatures since 2014 and the first day not getting above freezing in a decade. Computer models are growing in agreement and possible accumulation numbers for a snow event on Friday.
From 10 PM to 2 AM tonight, there is a slight chance of some lowland snow in the Kirkland-Bellevue-Woodinville area. Woodinville is under a Winter Weather Advisory. There appears to be a sputtering convergence zone attempting to form on the King-Snohomish County line, but a more substantial zone south of Seattle dominates the current weather pattern.
Monday will be partly-cloudy with highs into the low 40s and lows on Monday night close to freezing. Tuesday will be a repeat of Monday, with clouds forming late in the day. A weak system will pass through on Tuesday night, carrying very little moisture, but bringing bitterly cold air.
The weather models are increasingly in agreement that there will be lowland snow showers on Wednesday morning, but not enough to cause travel problems. Highs on Wednesday will get to the mid to high 30s. Wednesday night will drop into the low 20s through the region.
Thursday will be cloudy as cold air and more moisture spills into our region. Temperatures will struggle to get to 30 degrees in the urban centers and along the lakeshore. Areas away from the water and our higher hills won’t get above the 20s. Models are increasingly in agreement that snow showers will move in late on Thursday as temperatures drop to around 20 degrees, lower to the east and in the hills.
The forecast for Friday is too far out to predict with confidence. There is little disagreement in the computer models that it will be bitterly cold, only getting to 30 degrees for a high. Any precipitation that falls on Friday will fall as snow, and it will accumulate. Some models (including the model we trust) indicate the potential for 4 to 8 inches of snow on Friday and into Saturday morning. We will have a lot more confidence in our forecast by the middle of the week.
Looking past Saturday, there is a slight warming trend potentially next week, with a wetter system arriving. However, that system could start as a snow event before turning into rain.
The Washington Hospital Association announced that hundreds of thousands of fake N95 masks ended up in dozens of Washington hospitals. The counterfeit masks are well constructed and appear in every way to look like 3M manufactured masks. They even include the 3M logo, display of lot numbers, certifications, and warnings like a real mask.
Area hospitals are already sending out memos to their staff on the situation and pulling the impacted masks out of circulation. Hospital workers, including at critical medical facilities treating COVID, unknowingly started using the masks in late December. There is no information on if any hospital workers were sickened by using the fake masks.
N95 masks are produced through a specialized process that creates an electrostatic charge in the filter material. Most viruses are too small to be stopped by conventional paper or cloth masks, but the amount exhaled or inhaled is reduced. The electrostatic charge in an N95 and KN95 mask attracts the particles as they attempt to pass through the weave and capture them. Without the electrostatic charge, the cover provides no more protection than other woven masks.
3M developed this process, and their masks were readily available before the spread of COVID for medical and industrial use. High demand by the medical community has put a lot of strain on the supply chain, increasing costs by 200%, and during most of 2020, state and hospital officials were on their own to secure their supplies.
A summary of events from January 29 to February 1, 2021
The fallout from the January 6, 2021, Insurrection continues
Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Facebook post about the 2018 California wildfires being started by the Rothchilds who funded Jewish space lasers comes to light
Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene is interviewed by British neo-Nazi Katie Hopkins on January 7, 2021
Donald Trump’s entire legal team quits over the weekend after differences emerged on strategy and payments
Donald Trump to now be represented by David Schoen and Bruce Castor Jr, lawyers who both have questionable pasts with their legal connections to sex offenders
Portland streamer “Behind Enemy Lines” outs one of his moderators in an interview where “Ryan” discusses entering the Capitol during the insurrection
L Lin Wood has been asked to take a mental health evaluation by the state of Georgia as disbarment continues
Brian Williams played a “fake” news segment mocking the meeting of former President Donald Trump and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy
State GOPQ Representative Shawnna Bolick of Arizona introduced legislation that would enable the legislature of Arizona to reject the vote of the Arizona people
Michael Flynn is trying to cash in on the QAnon money ramping up his own website Digital Soldiers and selling Q merch
Open Secrets has connected the dots on campaign contributions and donations to January 6, 2021, insurrection, listing the people and agencies involved
Nebraska Catholic priest Rev. David Fulton did an exorcism outside the Capitol during the insurrection and is facing backlash
John Revlett of Island, Kentucky, and a fourth-place winner in a “sexy farmer” contest was arrested for his involvement in the insurrection after outing himself on Snapchat
Couy Giffin of New Mexico (also reported as from Texas) and the founder of Cowboys for Trump was arrested for his involvement in the insurrection and has been placed into solitary confinement for his actions after his arrest
Fans of lowland snow and windstorms haven’t had much to rejoice about this winter, and it doesn’t look like that streak is going to change. A change in the weather is coming, including the coldest air of this winter, but the arctic blast will also bring sunshine and clear nights.
Friday afternoon will bring a mixed bag to the Kirkland-Bellevue-Woodinville area with sun, clouds, and a few raindrops. Temperatures will get into the low 50s, which is warm for this time of year and won’t drop below 40 tonight.
Saturday and Sunday are almost twins with typical February weather. Temperatures will reach into the 40s on both days. It will be cloudy with a chance of rain showers each day, but not a washout. Sunday night will drop to 32-36 degrees, making it possible for some wet snowflakes on Super Bowl Sunday. There is nothing in the forecast model to indicate a repeat of 2019, which brought a surprise snowstorm to the region.
All of next week is looking sunny for now, but forecasts more than five days out aren’t much better than throwing darts. Tuesday night could see temperatures as low as 20 degrees, and Wednesday may not get much above freezing. If the model holds, next week will deliver the first hard freeze of the season for the area.
Ethan Nordean, also known as Rufio Panman, is a well known Proud Boy leader with local ties to the Puget Sound area – local photographer Nate Gowdy witnesses Nordean with the Proud Boys in Washington D.C. on January 6 and spoke with him
His family owns Wally’s Chowder House in Des Moines, Washington, and Wally’s Drive-In in Buckley, Washington – Ethan was fired from Wally’s in June 2020
Wally’s Chowder House has been used as a location for Proud Boy meetings but his parents have denounced Ethan’s connection to the Proud Boys
Des Moines, Washington Mayor Matt Pina has refused to remove Wally’s Chowder House from the Des Moines EATS Program, a city program that buys vouchers from local restaurants so seniors and veterans have meals during the COVID pandemic lockdown
Nordean has frequently been accompanied by Enrique Tarrio, Joe Biggs, Eddie Block, and Zach Rehl
The Justice Department says a member of the Proud Boys has been arrested in Washington state in connection with the breach of the nation’s Capitol.
Ethan Nordean, also known as Rufio Panman, was due to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Wednesday afternoon, after he was charged in Washington, D.C.
Activists question tactics in hotel raid over the weekend
WARNING: This report shows scenes of protest and police action against children. Viewer discretion is advised.
[OLYMPIA] – (Malcontent News) On the surface, the story is altruistic, and the visuals awful. Following in the footsteps of activists in Tacoma, an organization calling itself Oly Housing paid for 17 rooms on Saturday to place unhomed persons at a Red Lion Hotel in Olympia, Washington. Just as in Tacoma, the plan was to pay for one night and demand that city and county officials continue to pay for the rooms. On Sunday evening, a massive police response met activists where families, including small children, were removed by SWAT officers who threw flash-bang grenades into hotel rooms. As time has gone by, a clearer picture has emerged, raising questions from all sides.
On Saturday, activists engaged with some of the local unhomed in the downtown Olympia area to have them occupy the rooms. Thirty-three people, including children, agreed to accept the offer. Being unhomed is a challenge any time of the year, but rain, cold, harassment, and rats have made the encampments in Olympia untenable.
As checkout time came and went on Sunday, the property appeared calm. Protesters made demands for better sanitary facilities at encampments, permanent government housing solutions for those making less than $26,200 a year, for Thurston County to use available FEMA dollars to continue paying for the hotel rooms, and an end to sweeping homeless encampments. In a report from the Olympian, about a dozen people were sitting in the hotel’s lobby looking at their phones and reading magazines.
By the time sunset arrived, something had gone wrong. At about 6 PM, hotel staff called the police, reporting they had locked themselves in a basement room, were in fear for their safety, and armed protesters had taken over the lobby. There were unconfirmed reports of blacked-out windows and mattresses used for barricades. At 6:30 PM, Capitol Way in Olympia was closed, and SWAT teams rolled in with a heavy police presence. Law enforcement swept the hotel floor by floor, deploying multiple flash-bang grenades and making seven arrests. Video from the scene showed a woman with her two children, one swaddled in blankets, leaving the hotel under police guard while activists taunted officers.
On Monday, a press conference about the events wavered between reality and absurdity. Officials initially danced around the police tactics questions until finally admitting the use of “a couple” of devices to clear the hotel. Eyewitness reports, including reporters on the scene, reported more than a “couple” of blasts coming from inside the hotel. The statements of blacked-out windows and mattress barricades didn’t materialize in the conference either (nor were they denied).
What has emerged in the 48-hours since the raid is universal outrage. Local advocates for the unhomed are outraged over the tactics of Oly Housing. Supporters of Oly Housing are outraged over what they perceive as a false narrative aligned with the police and mainstream media and a lack of focus on tactics. Some of the unhomed are outraged, feeling they were used and weren’t fully informed of the legal jeopardy they could face. City and county officials are frustrated because the FEMA dollars for emergency housing were just made available by the new Biden Administration, in place for less than two weeks, and they were already in the process of applying for the money.
Right-wing groups are outraged at the perception of “Antifa” (an ideology and philosophy, not an organization) going unchecked and police not responding with enough violence against protesters. Many are questioning the police response to unhomed persons taking over a hotel, in contrast to the police response on January 6, when about 100 right-wing protesters stormed the broke through a gate, assaulted a state police recruit on live television, and stormed to the front door of the governor’s mansion. No one has been arrested in that incident despite overwhelming evidence of multiple crimes.
Long time Thurston County area advocate Renata Rollins lamented the fallout in a Facebook post. In her post, she called out activists within Housing Oly who were arrested on Sunday being represented by private attornies, while public defenders represented the unhomed. Working for over a decade in housing, she pointed out that Olympia had ended sweeps of homeless encampment like those done in Seattle and Bellingham two years ago, and the county already provides trash dumpsters and sanitary stations at the encampments. Trash pickup and dumpsters are not offered to the unhomed in cities like Seattle. While recognizing not enough is being done she wrote, “The group’s demands made no sense. They read like they were copy-pasted from some other community’s struggle because whoever penned them had no concept or context for what’s actually going on in Olympia and Thurston County.“
In contrast, activists engaged in direct action believe that not enough is being done to support the unhomed, which has grown in 2020 due to COVID and living in conditions that only further spread the disease. They believe the government establishment serves corporate America and the wealthy and views the unhomed as disposable. Representative of the political horseshoe formed versus a straight line, some within the direct action groups believe that only the use of force will change the system.
Established activists in the South Sound have expressed growing frustration with direct action groups’ tactics in January. A protest led by outside groups in Tacoma over a police cruiser driving through a group of people earlier in the month led to broken windows and graffiti in a Black neighborhood. In that incident, local activists blamed outsiders from Seattle, Olympia, and Portland for the damage.
The challenges facing the unhomed are undeniable. The failures to address homelessness at federal, state, county, and local levels should not be thrown at local activists’ feet. Further north in King County, enough private and public funds are spent addressing houselessness to solve the problem, with little effect. The connections of addiction and mental illness to homelessness are undeniable. Despite campaign promises from the Trump Administration to address the opioid epidemic, 34-million Americans abuse or are addicted to dangerous drugs. King County just experienced its highest number of overdose deaths ever. Washington state continues to be one of the worst states in the country for mental health treatment.
What is reality is that most of the 33 people who occupied hotel rooms on Saturday night are back out on the street, living in squalid conditions with minimal support.
The US Coast Guard and King County Sheriff have been searching Lake Washington after a crewless boat slammed into a pier in Juanita Bay on Tuesday. Under its power, the craft struck a dock at the base of Finn Hill between Juanita and Kenmore. An inspection of the boat revealed a wallet and cellphone, causing officials to believe the operator has fallen overboard.
Officials initiated a search and rescue operation involving aircraft from King County, US Coast Guard, US Air Force, and watercraft from King County. The aerial search extended across almost the entire length of Lake Washington and was called off after nightfall on Tuesday. Shortly after sunrise on Wednesday morning, a Coast Guard helicopter flew a search pattern over Juanita Bay.
Officials have not identified the boat’s owner or the ID of the wallet and phone found onboard. There has been no indication of foul play, and officials are treating this as an accident. Search and rescue officials have not made any statement if they are still looking for survivors. Lake Washington is below 50 degrees this time of year, making survival for 24 hours in the water near impossible, even with a life presever.
Our live webcast from the Seattle Anarchist Jurisdiction
WARNING: This episode includes videos of police violence, child abuse, protest, and discusses domestic violence in detail – viewer discretion is advised.
The show from February 1, 2021, featured David Obelcz and our co-host Jennifer Smith.
Rochester, New York Police pepper-spray a handcuffed 9-year-old child – community outrage explodes as body camera video becomes available
Malcontented Minutes – our new speed round of news
The state of Texas has things go very wrong when they issue an Amber Alert for Chucky – yes the murderous horror movie doll Chucky
Redditors go after silver commodity trading as a new tactic in their fight against hedge funds
Missouri Museum of history launches an online exhibit of LGBTQIA history in the state of Missouri
Jason Raantz (Seattle) goes on a racist rant about how BLM education during Black History Month in Seattle schools is instilling the fear of police into a new generation of children
David Bell, a Black man, dies in a hospital parking lot in Missouri after emergency room physicians refuse to treat him on his third trip for breathing problems
President Biden replaces Andrew Jackson’s portrait with a Native American sculpture
The National Zoo in Washington D.C. releases a video of a panda playing in the snow
LGBTQ activist Carmen Vasquez, 72-years old, dies of COVID-19
Data breach exposes the private personal identification (PII) of 1.6 million Washingtonians who have applied for or received unemployment for almost all of 2020, including bank account numbers and ID information
Birth certificate controversy over Archie, the child of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle explodes in tabloid press
Chad Wheeler domestic violence assault update as his victim faces him in court for the first time
COVID-19 Five Fast Facts
Reading recommendations for Black History Month
David and Jennifer provide their insurrection update
Journalists, activists, and researchers defending the First Amendment
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