A strong storm swept through Clark County on Thursday morning, bringing with it potent wind, rain and minor havoc on local roadways.
The system dumped 0.1 to 0.2 of an inch of rain in places in just a matter of minutes, according to the National Weather Service in Portland. As the morning rush hour was winding down, the storm left standing water on stretches of Interstate 5, state Highway 500, state Highway 503 and other roadways.
“It was definitely an intense rain, just for a short, brief time,” said weather service meteorologist Colby Neuman.
Washington State Department of Transportation crews responded to clear the roads, said spokeswoman Abbi Russell. The agency saw numerous minor collisions during the morning, she said, but no particular rhyme or reason to where they occurred. Many people were simply driving too fast for the conditions, Russell said.
With the rain came a cold front that dropped the temperature by several degrees during the 8 a.m. hour. Winds gusted as high as 36 mph at Vancouver’s Pearson Field, according to the weather service. Clark County didn’t see any major power losses, but outages reportedly affected thousands of people in Portland and briefly left Portland International Airport in the dark.
‘Volatile’ weather?
All of that isn’t unusual for November in the Northwest. And cool, wet conditions should continue for at least the next several days. But many are wondering what the oft-unpredictable winter months will bring to the Northwest.
Neuman offered this take:
“Basically the bottom line for the winter forecast is, we don’t know,” he said. “There’s nothing to really sort of hedge our bets in one direction or another.”
Part of the reason for that uncertainty is the absence of the weather phenomena known as El Niño and La Niña. Ocean conditions suggest neither trend is present this year, which makes this a “La Nada” winter, said Steve Pierce, president of the Oregon chapter of the American Meteorological Society.
El Niño winters are often characterized by warmer and drier conditions. La Niña winters can be cooler and wetter. But neither is a guarantee.
With neither pattern brewing in the Pacific Ocean this year, that leaves all cards on the table, Pierce said.
“We tend to see greater swings in week-to-week weather — what I would call highly volatile weather,” he said.
Some look to a less scientific source for the winter outlook: the Old Farmer’s Almanac. A recent analysis by Fox 12 meteorologists Brian MacMillan and Mark Nelsen looked more closely at the famed forecasts to see how they stacked up against what actually happened.
The verdict? Not so good.
“It’s pretty ugly,” Pierce said.
During the past four winters, the Farmer’s Almanac’s long-range forecasts correctly predicted Portland temperatures only 28 percent of the time, according to MacMillan and Nelsen. Precipitation forecasts were right about half the time.
But that analysis included a complete whiff, with 0 percent accuracy last year.
Pierce said there’s reason to believe low-elevation snow could be in the cards this year. The last two neutral winters, without an El Niño or La Niña, were in 2008-09 and 2003-04. Both produced major snow or ice events in the Portland-Vancouver area, he said.
The Farmer’s Almanac, for what it’s worth, sees a “much snowier than normal” winter in Vancouver this year, with “frequent snows from mid-December through the first three weeks of January.”
That’s no sure thing. But it’s not outside the realm of possibility, either.
“A broken clock,” Pierce said, “is always right at least twice a day.”
Columbian staff writer Emily Gillespie contributed to this story.
