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I'm going to be going up through there in a little less than a month... Any advice for improving our odds of not getting stuck/passing through safely? Should we certainly count on snowy weather?

Yeah all those forests are clearcut three or four times over with bullshit signs about how Weyerhaeuser or some other craptastic shitty environmentally devastating timber company is “preserving the environment.”
The only reason those asswipes even replant their clear-cuts, is because of a law that was passed in the 1980’s that they fought against tooth-and-nail. They fought even harder against the riparian zone law that was passed to protect salmon spawning streams and rivers. They call it “Environmental Terrorism.” Not kidding.

That is so cool!

Just imagine sitting in an electric car.

Shots of the scenic towns/homes along Mukilteo, Edmonds, Everett, Kingston, Port Gamble, Bellingham and/or Port Townsend shorelines.

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I'd suggest watching the video.

They don't break the laws of physics. They work by moving heat from one location to another (when it's cold, from outside your house to in your house). To create 100W of new heat, you need 100W of electricity, but to move 100W of heat, you need less than 100W of electricity.

There are federal tax incentives as well.

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Anyone have experience with replacing gas furnace with ducted heat pump? Any good companies in the Seattle area?

I did not know that

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It was the result of one of the largest bond defaults in history, and we are all as ratepayers still servicing that debt. A boondoggle of epic proportions and basically a theft from all of us in the region-

https://www.historylink.org/File/5482

We have better ways to generate power than massive nuc projects, renewables are far cheaper and the storage issue can be solved on the same scale without the waste.

Eliminating gas infrastructure also can save builders money, I don't know the exact costs, but I know it isn't cheap. Gas utilities are shit scared about this, so they may have dropped prices for new hookups/developments.

Also, everyone pays meter fees for gas meters, I think I pay around $110/year just for the privilege of having a gas meter, further longtime savings for home buyers with all-electric homes.

You can't get to the riverbed anymore, no. There's a fenced off viewing deck at the bottom now.

Really?? I had no clue! Thanks for the heads up, I’ll be doing that for sure!

We basically keep the lodge hall at 65 F and then turn it up a few hours before meetings and events. Having a heat pump requires thinking differently about heating than having a furnace that can generate heat quickly.

Oh hell yeah. During the winter months Im checking those cams frequently anytime we are going to drive over.

Controls may help if someone can remember to throttle the heat remotely via a smartstat or somesuch, but you are totally right, heat pumps just don't have the capacity of a traditional gas furnace unless grossly oversized. Backup electric resistance heat can help boost temps quickly if the controls are set that way, but you wind up spending a lot of extra juice since they are about 1/3 as efficient.

Leaving spaces warmer can help keep structures dry in our soggy winter months, but there is an energy debit. Early on and adaptive recovery features in a lot of thermostats can let the space ramp up to temperature over many hours ahead of a scheduled setpoint change for spaces that are not used often without using backup heat.

For anyone listening, traditional setbacks with conventional systems like electric or gas furnaces don't make sense with heat pumps, they are designed to run for long periods of time when it's cold, and simply don't have the capacity to ramp temps up and down by say, 10°F. Outside my suggestion above, this is a "set and forget" technology.

Especially after they paid into it for 40 years.

I have never before seen someone politically opposed to the invention of electricity.

Snoqualmie is the worst pass in the snow. Honestly it’s a joke. Take Hwy 2 over stevens for much less headache.

That depends entirely on where you live and which heat pump you choose. The latest high-HSPF models rarely resort to backup even in USDA zone 4. Still, I think we'll see many owners of existing homes there replacing older central AC units with heat pumps while keeping gas for security, much as many Canadians do. This will change over time as cold weather heat pumps keep improving.

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