By Gordon McCraw, Meteorologist for the Tillamook County Pioneer
Well, that was a lot of fun! It looks like the Tillamook area saw around 1 to 1 ½” of rain in the last 24 hours. This was expected to be a wind event, and it didn’t disappoint, though we saw some lower gusts than expected, Tillamook saw winds gusting to 39 while Manzanita reported a gust to 46. If you went down to Lincoln County, Yaquina Bay Bridge hit 73. This still managed to cause some sporadic power outages as trees downed some lines from Netarts to Nehalem.
The low pressure area responsible for all this still looks impressive as it continues to spin west of Vancouver Island. This is rotating showers with some thunderstorms northeastward across the area so, there is a chance we could see a few more tonight, and we continue to have southeasterly winds 5-10 gusting to 20 tonight, the low near 42.
This was so much fun, Mother Nature has decided to give us a round two, starting tomorrow. It appears another low pressure area will develop west of California and rotate under the one mentioned above, then move up towards Washington. The issue is, just how strong will this low be, and just how far off the coast it will be. The current thinking for tomorrow is, we see more showers with the winds southwesterly 5-10, the high near 54, then tomorrow night we see more showers with the wind increasing to 10-15 gusting to 25 by tomorrow night, lows near 45.
It appears the winds peak Friday afternoon, with the rainy skies, the southerly winds becoming 20-25 gusting to 35, then we transition to showers Friday night, the winds slowly easing, becoming southwesterly 5-10, highs near 56, lows near 41. As far as how much moisture will this next system bring, it appears we are looking at another 1-2” of rain for Thursday/Friday. This is good news for the rivers as that threat remains low.
It continues to look like the weekend will be semi-wet with more showers around Saturday and Sunday, highs near 51, lows near 39.
