The winds blasted through this morning bringing power outage across the county. While the winds have eased now in Tillamook County, they were howling earlier. Tillamook Airport saw a gust of 46, Astoria 51, Pacific City 52, even over in Portland at the airport gusting to 38. This did cause some power outages and even road closure due to downed trees. These were associated with a front that came through that gave some folks a quick ½” of rain with 1 1/3” reported up around Lees Camp. All this has started the increase river flow rates that will only continue to rise.
The next in the series of atmospheric rivers is due tonight, and likely a moderate to strong event, bringing heavy rain and another round of strong winds into tomorrow morning. With another round of heavier rains, we could see another 1-2” of rain tonight and still another 1-2” tomorrow during the day. This will cause the rivers to climb several more feet but still be below Action Stage though the Coast Range could see as much as 6” for this next event. The thing to watch is there is a slight chance that some basins could see as much as 7 or 8” of rain through tomorrow which would cause the river to rise even faster.
The rain does ease tomorrow evening into Monday, but, you guessed it, another atmospheric river and front pushes in and brings rain, heavy at times through Tuesday night. While it looks like, for now anyway, the hose will be pointed more to the north, the latest river forecast does show the Wilson River hitting Flood Stage Tuesday morning, cresting into Minor Flood Stage at 12.74’ (Flood is 12’) around noonish before dropping down below flood in the afternoon. As always, I caution you, this is AT THIS TIME. The forecast can and will change between now and then, it could be better, or it could be much worse!
Wednesday on still looks cloudy and wet, just not quite as bad.
