By Gordon McCraw, Meteorologist for the Tillamook County Pioneer
Welcome to Winter folks, the start of winter, the winter solstice, and the shortest day of the year, all happened yesterday. So, after another wet weekend, we can expect the active weather to continue with a low pressure area near British Columbia combining with an associated trough of low pressure in the Pacific. This combination will steer a series of disturbances across the region. We saw one today that gave us the rain and breezy winds that continue tonight, though the winds do ease a little, becoming southerly 5-10 gusting to 20, tonight’s low drops to near 39.
The rain diminishes later tomorrow morning though we could still see a widely scattered shower as a weak ridge of high pressure moves across, which also brings calm winds, and a high temperature of around 48 degrees. The rain returns later tomorrow night with another approaching disturbance that could be a problem on Christmas Eve, but more on that in a minute, as far as tomorrow night goes, rainy with light winds, the low near 48.
Now, Wednesday has turned into a very difficult day to forecast. The models all paint a different picture that ranges from a little wet to a little wet and very windy. Just to put you in the panic mode, but to show you the difference, one model has moderate rain with the winds at the coast and possibly inland, gusting from 60 to 80 mph. The National Weather Service points out this would not be as bad as the Columbus Day 1962 storm, but, would be the strongest since the 2007 storm. Some of the other models say light to moderate rain with little wind. All this depends on the track of the developing low pressure area, which the models historically have a hard time with. If the low tracks further offshore, then the coast might see some decent gusts. If the low is closer to the coast then we see the worst-case scenario, with the very high winds. If the low tracks further inland, like over the Cascades, the impact would be minimal.
If the worst case were to develop, then we are looking at those high winds moving up the coast Wednesday morning, into Southern Oregon around 9am, then move quickly up the coast and be northwest of Washington by around 4pm. This would mean we see increasing wind that morning, that peak early afternoon, then eases that evening. On the positive side, we had previously expected that the area could see heavy rain and heavy Cascade snow over the Holidays, but it now appears that threat is diminishing.
The National Weather Service will wait until the next model run for better consistency, then have a meeting to look at updating the forecast and possibly start issuing any Advisories, Watches and Warnings that are necessary. If the high wind scenario does develop, we are looking at some likely significant impacts including lots of downed trees, power outages and more. This event would not only impact the coast, but inland as well. If you have travel plans, as I do, over the holiday period, it is important to look at weather.gov/Portland for the lasted forecasts, and at Tripcheck.com for road impacts. Also know that being a holiday, and the large coverage of possible impacts, tripcheck.com will be very busy and may have a hard time keeping up with the many changes. All these impacts will be on top of the current landslide issues we have on the county and State roads, making travel even more hazardous. I will try to send out a brief update tomorrow.
After all this fun, it looks like we will continue to have the southwesterly flow pushing in periods of disturbed weather, brings on again, off again, rain through the area the rest of the week, and maybe the weekend, high temperatures remain around 50, lows around 40.
So, stay tuned, have a plan, stay safe, and Merry Christmas to all.