Good morning all. It’s Pat! (remember the SNL skit). For those of you who don’t know me, I am sure most of you forgot since I have posted only one other time, I am the weather producer for Good Day Oregon. Something caught my eye this morning sitting in the lonely studio, so I figured I would write about it.
Here in the western valley, we have reverted back to our morning clouds and afternoon sunshine theme. However, east of the Cascades have been under a barrage of thunderstorms over the last 48 hours.
I have been sitting here since about 4:30 this morning and watching the lighting fill the radar at a fairly consistent rate. I haven’t counted each individual strike but if I had to guess, I would estimate around 150-200 strikes since 5 o’clock this morning. The lightning map on Mark’s Weather page has been quite colorful lately and today will add to that mosaic as more afternoon thunderstorms are gearing up. Most of this action is due to the upper-level trough sitting just off the coast of Oregon-California. The threat looks to expand on into Thursday. Lots of fun stuff east of the mountains.
Mark ran this graphic last night in his forecast. It shows the climatology of Oregon thunderstorms pretty well. Rather easy to see from his graphic that the Pacific Ocean plays a big role in stabilizing the atmosphere until the air rises over the Cascades. Doesn’t look like many golf rounds will be completed today east of those mountains!
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
Decent thunderstorm wind gust in Pullman today of 41 mph.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobext.php?wfo=otx&sid=PUW&num=48
Any idea where this is?
Cam just says “Whitman County”
http://www.whitmancounty.org:3001/view/index.shtml
I was thinking Colfax possibly?
Yup, that’s the webcam on top of the District Courthouse in Colfax. The America West Bank is visible across the street:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=whitman+county+courthouse&sll=46.882562,-117.364272&sspn=0.003762,0.008132&ie=UTF8&hq=whitman+county+courthouse&hnear=&ll=46.884454,-117.364272&spn=0.003578,0.008132&z=17&iwloc=B
Here is the link…
https://www.sip.ucar.edu/ForAGGsampling.php
The NWS posted that the NCAR will be doing a survey this Fall of folks using the NWS site. the link is on here…..
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=45.8587228&lon=-123.1928926&site=all&smap=1&searchresult=Vernonia,%20OR,%20USA
I think God is trying to teach me not to brag or something. 🙂
Lesson learned:
Bragging is nagging.
79.8F.
Seems like any time I show emotions about storms I tend to kill them as I got excited and told my parents right when they storms collapsed.
And this isn’t with just this system either.
When we had canceled snow events it always happend right as soon as I open my big mouth.
The best situation for me is to not say anything unless of course my parents ask me and I’ll inform them but I won’t go blabbering my mouth.
I’ll prove it with any additional cells. 🙂
I promise to not kill your T-storms anymore Timmy!
Nah…. We just did not have the dynamics to support more storms or for them to persist.
Watch Storms LIVE!!!
Yeah, I have to look elsewhere for t-storm fun and excitement.
West Texas. Andrews, Texas to be exact.
http://72.48.231.50/view/index.shtml
I’ve seen bolts and flashes thus far.
That Mt. Hood Skycam says it updates every 15 minutes, however the last image is from 4:45 pm… Any explanation?
Satanic Squirrels.
Yes! Simple! The camera took a direct hit by lightning and is now out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Solar storm.
Pix of cascades convection:
http://tinypic.com/r/15ga7b8/3
taken from:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=45.0787,+-122.6625&t=p&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=45.058001,-122.099304&spn=0.995285,2.081909&z=9
Looking mostly E (say 95-100 degrees)
I assume this is the one over Warm Springs moving NNE
Just got home so I haven’t noticed it’s progress, but assuming it’s moving N.
Weak southerly marine push in progress?
Hillsboro
4:53 PM – 83 NE@7
5:50 PM – 75 S@13
Appears to have been at least at this location
Wow…not local at all…but perhaps a sign of our warming arctic regions holding more moisture. Barrow has set some large precip records recently too.
… Record 30 day precipitation at Northway…
Between June 25th and July 24th… .9.29 inches of rain was measured
at Northway. This is… by far… the greatest 30 day precipitation of
record. The previous record was 6.95 inches between June 19th and
July 18 2005. The normal precipitation total for an entire year at
Northway is 9.37 inches.
If only this were a streaming cam:
Nice, Tyler! Where’s the location & direction?
Current IR. You can see that low offshore spinning around. Its going to be strengthening as it moves inland and to our south sat morning. Hoping for the best.
Yeah Derek it seems to be moving ESE towards a favorable location to pull S-SE flow aloft around it back over western Oregon. Question is will we be too stable and cool? I’m sure it will all be elevated activity whatever does occur.
Oh there is something neat. Run the WV Loop and look at the convective area over central Oregon.
http://sat.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/loopsat.php?wfo=pqr&area=nw&type=wv&size=4
Notice how it too is rotating. This is the cell over Warm Springs… No wonder it pulsed up so strongly.
Maybe the 2″ hail evaporated before reaching the ground…. Just a light hearted comment. I still need to see a supercell, even better yet a low hanging mesocyclone or even better yet go for a spin in a F2 or F3 tornado before I die. An F4 would make me too dizzy and vomit.
I agree that could very well be I’m not sure what the wet bulb parameter was at… and yeah I really need to do some legit storm chasing.
I wanted to point out that I am seeing some impressive CU towers to my southeast. They might be from the storms near Warm Springs, but it seems closer perhaps.
Looking east from Sweet Home at cell west of Madras:
Radar at same time:
If it holds together, could be a nice light show later.
Looks like the Warm Springs cell is falling apart. Wahh.
If only Madras or Warm Springs had a streaming cam.
Severe Thunderstorm warning is needed for western Jefferson County. Currently 75.0dbz, 2.13″ hail marker, 99.2% POSH, and Estimated Cloud Top 42,300′
Correction 2.43″ Hail Marker now 100% chance of POSH
Thats one intense looking cell. 77 dBZ is the highest recorded reading on KRTX.
I was just under that cell. The ground truth is that warning not needed…yet.
I dunno… 20+ minutes hail core sustained over 2″. Very nice structure on the cell now also as noted on the southwest flank of it. Even some slight curvature or weak notching.
I guess due to the pulse nature of things it wasn’t warned. I still would have personally.
That cell on radar in central cascades…got to see it form j N of 3 sisters and move overhead and to the N….most of the bolts were CC…would say heard more than 2 rolls of thunder per min for past 80 min…no hail. Less precip than the radar would suggest…just big rain drops
So Rob, you agree with me that this is pretty much a miss for the rest of us?
I prefer sweet red onions on my burger. I also like to marinate the burger in teriyaki or other.
and add a touch of bourbon to that, then perfecto!
Cell just to my se with freq lightning, loud thunder 🙂
Everything is falling apart faster than Wal-mart luggage. Not surprising as dynamics weaken progressively from south to north.
Yeah, and almost as fast as how much business Gamecrazy lost over the last few years. lol
Or is that from north to south… Ohhh it just isn’t important. I’m thinking BBQ tonight….
It still was a tad bit of a surprise however, according to last night on this blog, none of us thought of thunderstorms in the valley today.
Rod Hill thought of thunderstorms in the valley today on the 24th Timmy, everyone said he was crazy, he must be psychic.