Category Archives: French Toast Emergency

French Toast Emergency, Local, Weather

Wind and rain on Monday will bring more woe to the Puget Sound lowlands

[KIRKLAND] – (MTN) When it rains it pours and it has been pouring in Western Washington for almost a week with flood watches and warnings across the region. Monday will deliver yet another punch of heavy rain and the strongest winds yet driven along an atmospheric river extending out into the Pacific Ocean.

The forecast for tomorrow is extremely challenging with little agreement across weather models. The strongest winds will move through Central Puget Sound from 6 a.m. to noon on Monday. For wind storms, Malcontent News puts more weight on the Euro Model, which is forecasting a Wind Advisory grade event for the morning.

The National Weather Service has not issued a Wind Advisory at this time. On Sunday at Seatac Airport winds reached Wind Advisory territory for three hours, peaking with a gust of 42 MPH.

For Sunday night, the rain will increase between 11 p.m. and midnight with breezy winds from the south. It will be unseasonably warm, with low temperatures from 55 to 57. South winds will be 10 to 15 MPH with increasing gusts toward daybreak. Overnight rainfall will be around one-tenth of an inch.

Monday morning will be wet, windy, and warm. Temperatures will reach 57 to 59 degrees early in the day before dropping sharply in the afternoon. Winds will continue from the south from 15 to 25 MPH with gusts to 45 MPH. Rainfall with be close to three-quarters of an inch through the area, further saturating the soil.

Saturated soils combined with the wind will increase the chance of trees being uprooted, as well as enhance the landslide risk. Scattered power outages are likely. By sunset, the winds will die down along with the rain. Overnight temperatures will drop to 38 to 40 degrees.

Drivers should prepare for a long commute on Monday morning and give themselves some extra time. Heavy rain, landslide risk, and saturated soil can impact Sounder Train service, commuters should check on conditions in the morning and have an alternative plan for the return home.

People should never drive around road closed or high water warning signs, especially in the dark. According to FEMA, a passenger car or car-based sport utility vehicle can stall out in six inches of water and start to float in 12. Even if you successfully drive through high water, moisture can get into critical mechanical components and foul lubricants causing long-term damage.

French Toast Emergency, Local

Can you bake cookies in your car on a 111-degree day in Kirkland? Yes

[KIRKLAND] – (MTN) Twitter, YouTube, and Tik Tok were full of videos of people cooking eggs, bacon, pancakes, and cookies on decks, pavement, and in cars. Yesterday we put this to test using our company truck, which had been sitting all day and facing west.

We got off to a late start, putting the cookies into the General Motors built oven at 4:01 PM. We had planned for 2 hours, but many of you suggested we should go for 4 hours. A check at 6:15 PM showed we had a hot mess, as some of you voted. We didn’t open up the door to check because we wanted to retain as much heat as possible.

By 7:30 PM, it was still 108 degrees outside, but the sun had sunk low enough to our west that it was starting to get filtered by trees. The thermometer we put on the dashboard showed the interior had dropped to 140, but the cookies looked – done.

The tops were surprisingly chewy, while the very bottom could have benefited from a bit more heat. That may be our fault because we put a silicone sheet under the baking tray, thinking it would protect the dashboard. After we set up the cookies, we learned a car’s dashboard could get to 200 degrees, so any fears that the heated metal baking tray would damage the vehicle were unfounded.

If you like your cookies soft, these were nearly perfect. If you like your cookies with a crunch, like one of our unofficial testers, these were a nope.

Can you bake cookies in your car on a hot day? Yes, if you like them soft baked. If you’re wondering what the inside of the truck smells like, it smells like a bakery.

Breaking News, French Toast Emergency, Local

BREAKING: Counterfeit N95 masks flood area hospitals

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.

On the left is a real N95 mask produced by 3M and on the right is a counterfeit N95 mask produced by an unknown source

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.