Lightning Strike Last Night

The lightning strike last night DID hit the Home Depot in Beaverton.  Our lightning data showed a strike almost directly over that spot.  Read the post earlier from “DobMom”…

My son, who works at Beaverton Home Depot, just called me and reported he was told that an antenna on top of Home Depot was hit by that mighty lightning bolt last night. The boom was extremely loud at ground zero and allegedly some metal latches on a sky light melted and some of the metal dripped into the store! Glad Home Depot was able to play lightning rod with not much harm done.

I Hate Snow (In Late March)

It’s snowing again…in the central and northern Willamette Valley foothills and even lower!  The picture above is from south Salem around 9am this morning.  I just received another from Gates (about 900′) that shows plenty of snow on the ground (1″ or so).  Oops!  I forecast a snow level near 3,000′, but apparently about 2,000′ lower!  It’s the same story we’ve seen several times this winter with steady heavy precipitation pulling down the snow level lower than expected.  Looking at the radar, it appears several inches could fall above 500′ or so before the precipitation runs out.  

It’s a nice curl of a wave that’s moving inland.  Once it moves east by midday, we’re into the showers and sunbreaks routine through sunset.  So once again a chance for hail or thunder in the afternoon.  The instability is not as great as yesterday, and organized thunderstorms don’t appear as likely, in fact SPC didn’t even give us our own “SEE TEXT” on the convective outlook map.  But for the weather geeks there should be some action.

Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen