By Gordon McCraw, Meteorologist for the Tillamook County Pioneer
A very active weather system for the folks in southern Oregon over the weekend. I saw many weather stations in Roseburg reporting between 3 ½” to 4” of rain on Saturday alone, which gave some stations 6-8” of rain for their two-day total. Obviously, this caused many road closures down there from the flooding, landslides, and debris in the roadway. There were even some ski resorts down there that had to close because the snow was impacting so many roads.
Though the atmospheric river has weakened and moved on, they continue to have several rivers still in Major Flood Stage that are not expected to fall below Flood Stage until later tomorrow into Wednesday. As for the Tillamook area, we got away with less than ¾” of rain for the two-day total with .62” of rain on Saturday and only three hundreds of an inch of rain on Sunday.
Fortunately, things have calmed down now with only some scattered showers in the forecast. We do expect some unstable air to move in overnight tonight, so we also have a slight chance of some thunderstorms with small hail after midnight into the early morning hours. Other than some gusty winds possible near any thunderstorm activity, the winds will be calm tonight, the low dropping to near 37. This would mean there is a chance of the summit of Hwy 6 and Hwy 26 seeing some accumulating snow in the early morning hours when the temperature there drops below 32 degrees.
So, there is still a chance of showers tomorrow Tuesday, but with a ridge moving in from the west as the trough slides to the east, we see decreasing coverage with southerly winds 4-8, the high temperature near 51. Tomorrow night, we see another trough approaching that pushes in the rain again tomorrow night, the winds becoming southeasterly 4-8, the low near 40.
A rainy, breezy day Wednesday with that trough and its associated front moving through that gives us southeasterly winds 8-12 gusting to 30, the high near 52. The rain transitions back to rain showers by around midnight Wednesday, the winds slowly diminishing, lows near 39.
A disturbance moves across Thursday that enhances the shower activity and gives us another chance of thunderstorms during the day Thursday. The active pattern continues with another disturbance bringing back the rain Thursday night. Then Friday, we see a low pressure area passing across to our north giving us more rain and breezy winds with yet another system expected to push in more rain over the weekend, highs in the mid 50s, lows in the low 40s.
Now, with the ground already being pretty saturated from this weekend’s rain, this week’s rain will cause the rivers to see increasing flow rates from all the additional rain, but, this far out, it is just something to keep an eye on.
