Page 8 - Ryan Packer News Today

Had enough rain? Well too bad, here comes more! We'll get light drizzle today, and then a major storm will drench us on Friday into Saturday. We may even — and this is still a big maybe — get snow on Christmas. A weak trough will move through today with a few more inches of snow for the passes.Then our attention turns toward the next system for Fri night & Saturday. This is expected to...

Sound Transit builds very nice trains, but are they aware that people ride them? This weekend a Sound Transit train lost power in the tunnel near the U District, stranding everyone aboard and leaving hundreds of people waiting at stations. While staff scrambled to fix the electrical problem (you can listen to an operator and dispatcher’s radio comms here), nobody bothered telling all the passengers what was going on, so after a half hour in...

Guilty? Certainly not that white boy from Antioch, Illinois, but certainly all three white men who participated in the 2020 murder of a black jogger named Ahmaud Arbery. So, the "long and dirty toenails" defense did not work. I'm sure there's an America where killing a black man for showing toenails that white supremacists find offensive is totally justified, but that America, which is not impossible, did not make an appearance in the Brunswick, Georgia,...

The city of Seattle is working on a plan to create a zero-emissions zone to mitigate urban pollution and reduce carbon emissions in dense, congested parts of the city.

January 4. That’s the deadline for about 84 million private sector workers to get vaccinated, including all workers at facilities that get Medicare and Medicaid funding. The National Retail Federation say the requirement is “burdensome,” because to them adhering to regulations is more burdensome than replacing the employees they killed. That ought to do it. Alaska Air will phase out single-use plastic bottles and cups for water starting today. The airline says that’ll eli...

How toxic containers lost in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Seattle Parks asking to phase out its gas-powered leaf blowers, and an anti-capitalist reading of a T.S. Eliot poem all chime together on this gray day.

FDA OKs booster shots for some who got Moderna and all over 18 who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccines: If you're over 65, or if you're 18 and "at high risk of severe COVID-19, or if you have frequent institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2," then you can get the half-dose Moderna booster. The agency also says you mix things up if you want. For real. A little bit of this, a little bit...

Welcome to day 275 of January 6th. The White House just blocked an attempt by Trump lawyers to withhold documents related to the right-wing attack on the Capitol, which means that soon the National Archives will provide a House committee with texts, call logs, emails, photos and more relating to that awful day that will never end. Surely, THIS will be the scandal that undoes Trump. Surely. An alarming robbery in the U District: Just...

Sensing they were walking into a public relations nightmare, Senate Republicans have made an abrupt about-face, and have agreed with Dems to extend the debt ceiling (i.e. the government's ability to borrow money) into December—a move that may have possibly avoided a global economic emergency. (Sorry, we're not giving the GOP credit for doing what was merely "the decent thing.") Well! The Seattle Times Editorial Board and the Stranger Election Control Board agree. Vote Sar...

This experience of walking across the bridge captured the feeling of a city whose space had been, once again, radically transformed by Link Light Rail.