Man, has it been a miserable couple of days here, or what? 120-mph winds along the Oregon Coast, 9- to 13-inch rainfall totals in some areas of western and northern Oregon, I-5 is closed near Centralia, WA (in some areas around Centralia, water covers I-5 to a depth of 10’), there’s been widespread flooding and windstorm damage…and the list goes on. There’s been a lot of damage, and a lot of people are suffering from a storm that was really the Pacific Northwest equivalent of a hurricane.
This is pretty unusual stuff for this part of the country. Getting an inch of rain here is a phenomenal amount of precipitation for these parts, and in fact up until this weekend the heaviest rain day this year had been just over an inch. Not exactly anything that might cause folks on the Texas Gulf Coast to pack up the Rambler and leave home over, but all you have to do is to watch the news to see what’s been laid to waste here.
Among the casualties was the world’s largest Sitka Spruce tree, just outside Seaside on Hwy, 26. The 700-year-old tree suffered a good deal of wind damage, and it’s prognosis at this time is undetermined. Of course, if you’ve been flooded out of your house in Tillamook, you’re probably not too terribly concerned about the fate of a tree, even if it is 700 years old.
On the truly inconvenient side, if you were planning on driving to Seattle any time soon, your plans just got changed. You literally can’t get there from here, unless you (a) fly or (b) drive several hours out of your way via the east side of the Cascades. And then’s the whole economic impact of what’s a majority commercial artery connecting Portland and Seattle.
Fortunately, the Portland area was spared the worst of the wind and rain. Portland International Airport (PDX) got 2.07 inches of rain from Sunday through Monday night, which, though nowhere near what some areas got (Lee’s Camp in the coast range reported a bit over 13”), is still a lot of rain for this area. There’s been some minor street flooding (Highway 217, which I take to and from work every day, was closed just north of the exit I normally take to get home), but nothing on the order of what’s happened on the Oregon Coast.
Yeah, this sort of weather is pretty atypical (people here tell me it’s been at least 10-11 years since anything like this happened here), but man, it sure managed to rip stuff up. It’s going to be awhile before some folks recover from this one. Me? I’m just thankful that I’m dry and I still have electricity. Things could be a whole lot worse.
