One of the things I thought I knew about the Seattle area was that it didn’t snow very much. In our first winter here, we had one snowy day and it thawed very rapidly. This winter has been a bit different. We have had a couple of large storms come through. The area is not well prepared for snow and the steep grades are not good when things get slippery. Here are some shots from around our area during and after the snows.
Finally, the first Boeing KC-46 Pegasus tankers were delivered to the USAF. Not one but two tankers were delivered in the ceremony, a nice effort at a joke by Boeing having left everyone thinking it would only be one. Then again, when you have that many of them sitting around, I guess it should have been even more! The ceremony took place on one day and the delivery was the following morning.
The jets left from Paine Field just after sunrise. That is sunrise if you don’t have clouds on the horizon. The sun had barely squeaked above those when the two jets took off as Medusa 1 and 2. They were preceded by a McConnell AFB KC-135R – the aircraft that they will be replacing. It got airborne in very limited light and headed for Kansas. Then the two new jets lined up in turn and departed. No flybys or wing waggles. Just gear up, switch to departure frequency and off into the steadily brightening sky. Avoid the traffic inbound to SeaTac and off you go. Lots more should be following soon while efforts continue to fix the issues with the camera system and the underwing hose and drogue pods.
For decades, the dominant feature of the Seattle waterfront has been the Alaskan Way Viaduct. This carried Route 99 from the south side of the city along the waterfront before diving into the Battery Street Tunnel and then popping above ground to continue to the north. It was a double deck viaduct with the northbound traffic on top and the southbound traffic on the lower level. The viaduct suffered damage in the Nisqually Earthquake and further investigation showed just how vulnerable it was so the replacement process commenced.
The replacement is a tunnel. Building the tunnel under the city was not an easy task. A tunnel boring machine named Big Bertha was brought in to cut the tunnel. Unfortunately, at some point it struck a hard object which damaged the main bearing for the cutting head. A hole had to be dug and the machine extracted, repaired and reinserted. This added years to the project but finally, in January 2019, the viaduct was closed. A three-week period was set aside between closure of the viaduct and opening of the tunnel to allow reconfiguration of the approaches at each end.
On the weekend before the tunnel opened for traffic, WSDOT held celebrations. A fun run took place on the Saturday and the Sunday included a bike ride. This included riding both directions through the new tunnel as well as both directions on the old viaduct. I signed up to take part. Tons of cyclists also took the opportunity and the event was sold out well in advance. The number of people mean things were pretty crowded and it could be congested at times. The long descent in the opening tunnel section could have been quite fast but it wasn’t possible to speed along given how many people there were.
The new tunnel sections were nice and well let. We actually rode quite a distance south after popping out near the Coast Guard base in the harbor and the wind was in our faces but that meant the run back was a lot easier. The second part of the tunnel had to be a climb given the descent we had made originally but it wasn’t too bad. Then we turned and were directed on to the streets to enter the Battery Street Tunnel.
This was a far more dismal experience. It is a dark and dirty tunnel and I was pleased to get through it quickly. We actually went through it the wrong way and we went south on the northbound part of the viaduct before diverting off and coming back on the lower level. One last run through the dirty tunnel and we had completed the ride. As I exited, plenty of riders were just starting. It would have been possible to do it all again but I was happy to have done it and decided it was time to go home. Later that day a serious (for Seattle) snow storm swept in so we had been lucky to get the ride done without any disruption.
This previous post included many shots from a visit to the Chihuly Museum in Seattle. In that post I mentioned how it closed around the time it was getting dark and that a return trip during the winter would be in order. With my mum visiting at Christmas, that’s exactly what we did. We timed our visit to be later in the day so we would be there once the sun set.
The transition from light to dark brought a lot of options in the gardens. Not everything was illuminated so some elements were okay while there was some light remaining but then were gone while others were only gently illuminated and only really showed the effects well once dark was fully upon us. The view back to the museum was also interesting as it changed and I did go back inside often to see how the move from external to internal lighting affected the glass works on display in there. Hopefully these shots give you a sense of how things look as darkness descends.
Nothing special here. Just happened to get a Gulfstream G280 as it arrived at Everett so I thought I might as well share it here.
I had previously got a few shots of the lighthouse at Mukilteo while waiting to catch a ferry. I hadn’t wandered around for long though. While showing my mum around the area, we stopped off to have a look at Puget Sound. It was a cloudy day but the sun was making the occasional appearance. We wandered around the lighthouse buildings and went to watch the ferries come and go to Whidbey Island.
After a short while, the clouds briefly parted. I headed back from the water’s edge to try and get a couple of photos of the lighthouse in sunlight. The white structure is hardly interesting when it is very cloudy, even when playing with some options for exposure to give alternatives in post processing. A bit of light makes all the difference.
The same could be said for the ferries. Out on the water, they would pass through patches of sunlight when they would suddenly “pop”. A short distance closer in and then they were back out of the light. You had to take the chance when it presented itself!
The only civilian 767s being built at the moment are for FedEx. I posted one of them on test at Paine Field in this post. I caught another one recently. I got the departure early on as it disappeared into the clouds that were pretty low. The return later had slightly better light. The approach was terminated with a go-around resulting in some vortices streaming from the wing as they climbed out. Dark skies make for an interesting background!
The weather was not great for a portion of the holiday period so, when the sun came out, we took a trip to Shoreline to walk along the beach. A couple of freight trains passed by while we were there. One of them was just a set of locomotives on a light move while the other was a train of tank cars. The curves along the shore provide a bit more context to just how long a full sized freight train can be with the line of cars snaking off into the distance.
January 2019 brought a milestone for the USAF. They accepted their first KC-46 Pegasus. Admittedly they accepted it with a number of deferred issues that Boeing has been given a few years to resolve but that are Category 1 deficiencies. I guess this should mean we will see a lot of deliveries in the coming weeks and months.
The backlog of jets parked up is substantial. There are jets parked at Boeing Field on both the military ramp and the flight test ramp. There are more scattered around the Boeing ramp at Everett. More of them are in the conversion area at the south end of Paine Field. More still are parked up across the cross runway. It’s a lot of jets and, if you are an accountant, this is a level of Work In Progress that must make you squirm. We should see them start to head on their way before too long.
Damp and cloudy days are not always ideal for aviation photography but they can provide some interesting options. One weekend I was up at Everett when they were approaching from the south. The jets broke out of the cloud at quite low level but there was some light from the side coming under the clouds. The damp air meant that the jets were pulling some conspicuous vortices as they flared for landing. They were a long way off but it was possible to get some shots of them. The 747 produced vortices that were easier to see but the 787s didn’t do too badly either.
