7pm Monday…
The storm was quite powerful for some, but underwhelmed for others. Lots of gusts 45-55 mph on local airport official observations, so a bit higher than I forecast, but very few spots were above 55 mph in the lowlands. Seems to me the “Lower Columbia” area from Vancouver to Longview was slammed hardest, along with Clark County. I’m really glad we didn’t say (at FOX12) 60-70 mph gusts; that would have been a huge windstorm that we haven’t seen in quite a long time.
PDX officially hit 55mph, which makes it a bit weaker than the March storm this year (58 mph). That storm put 70,000 PGE customers in the dark. This time PGE outages were only a bit above normal for a typical winter windstorm. Around 35,000 at the peak. Of course in YOUR neighborhood the storm maybe have been stronger than what we saw last March. That’s how it goes with storms.
I notice the Longview/Kelso damage was from a WEST wind, not a southerly wind. Something we might expect with a low moving quickly west to east.
Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen
Peak Gusts from the NWS…sorry about the coding gaps, I might clean that up when I get home:
PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
