Wild, wild weather!

Quite and interesting weather day yesterday. We had a couple bouts of severe weather, the first in the early morning hours caused wind gusts along the coast of over 70mph. One strong cell that came ashore in Lincoln City took the roof off the Sea Horse Condo Resorts and tossed it nearly a block away. We had numerous showers with small hail, then the tornado around noon over in Aumsville. As you may have heard, this was an F2 with estimated winds at 110-120mph. There were reportedly 50 structures damaged, 30 or more trees blown over or snapped, five sheds, 2 semis overturned, and two injuries. It appears the tornado skipped along a path about 5 miles long and did damage up to 150 yards wide in it’s path. Later in the afternoon the National Weather Service reported a water spout west of Pacific City but the only report I received was from a resident that called about dime to nickel size hail.

So, we can expect more showers today and this evening but not as strong as yesterdays though small hail is still likely at times along with gusty winds. We see fewer showers tomorrow then the models continue to show a low pressure system developing in the northeast Pacific Thursday into Friday and pumping disturbances over the area from time to time, all weekend and into the start of next week. And as for the temperatures, afternoon high 45-50, morning lows 35-40.

For anyone traveling over the higher passes in the next few days, look at ODOT’s Trip Check webpage before you go, this mornings reports advised the temperature was 32 with show flurries and about an inch of snow on the side of the road with slush on the road for both Hwy 6 and Hwy 26. The temperature was 33 down on Hwy 18. I would expect the snow level to lift some today, maybe up to 2000’ but dropping back down to 1500 during the nighttime hours. We could see an additional 3” of snow, somewhere between 1500-2000’ and above thru tomorrow.

Finally, all the rivers in Tillamook County are below Flood or Action Stage and continue to fall and this trend is forecasted to continue into next week.

Gordon