Meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Portland have issued a flood watch for the region and say another 1 to 3 inches of rain may fall in the metro area by Friday night, which could cause flooding in some places.
Clark County residents can expect local streams to run high and ponds and puddles to form. Some streams may flood in Cowlitz County, Portland and along the coast. The weather service pointed to the Grays and Lower Cowlitz rivers as cause for the most concern.
“We have a really active weather pattern coming in,” said Liana Brackett, a meteorologist at the weather service. “We’re expecting quite a bit of rain.”
A front of warm air was forecast to come through the area Wednesday night, followed by a cold band that will bring significant rain through today.
Brackett said Wednesday that the county may see about 2 inches of rain total from Wednesday night through tonight.
With that rain may come flooding and landslides, considering how saturated the soil is following multiple days of heavy rain, she said.
So far this month, 10.94 inches of rain have fallen at Pearson Field in Vancouver, compared with the average month-to-date total of 3.1 inches, according to weather service records. That includes 0.11 inch that fell in the 24-hour period ending at 3:53 a.m. Wednesday.
Since the water year began Oct. 1, a total of 18.76 inches of rain has fallen in Vancouver as of Wednesday afternoon, compared with 12.08 inches on average.
The private firm Accuweather, which provides weather data to media clients including The Columbian, calculated that 35.77 inches of rain has fallen in Vancouver in 2015, compared with a normal year-to-date value of 38.45 inches.
The heavy rain has had mostly minor impacts in our area thus far, but has caused a landslide that damaged a Camas home, a washout of a private road in north Clark County and a landslide that temporarily closed Interstate 5 northbound north of Woodland last week. Rain also has been a factor in traffic delays and crashes.
The forecast included high winds toward Camas and Washougal, and higher into the Columbia River Gorge, Brackett said.
Wind speeds were forecast to range from 25-35 mph, with gusts from 40-45 mph, she said.
“Again, we can see more trees falling and damage from trees, as well, since the soil is so saturated,” Brackett said.
Officials at Clark County Public Works have been watching the forecast, department spokesman Jeff Mize said Wednesday. The rain has eased since last week’s stormy weather, but many of the county’s streams are still probably running a bit high, he said.
“What we have coming up now is expected to be a pretty good blast,” he said. “We’re certainly hoping it’s not going to be as bad as last week.”
But at least it’s not Eastern Washington. Spokane and much of that region had snow on the ground Wednesday, which made driving difficult. Warm air from the Pacific is expected to bring snow to the area tonight before turning into a wintry mix, then rain Friday.
Closer to home, Brackett said, the snow level in the northern Oregon Cascades will climb from 4,500 feet to 7,000 feet by this afternoon, with rain and light snow forecast as the snow level drops around 3,000 feet into the weekend.
Despite record rains ending drought conditions in Western Washington and improving them in Eastern Washington, the state Department of Ecology says concerns of drought due to lack of snowpack are far from over.
The rain may be helping soil moisture in some areas, but rain-and-snow events in combination with warm temperatures are preventing significant snowpack accumulations in some areas.
Below-normal snowpack and higher-than-normal temperatures over last winter produced a drought that caused millions of dollars in crop loss east of the mountains, according to the department.
An El Niño weather pattern that’s forecast to be one of the warmest on record may result in below-normal snowpack and early snowmelt this winter in parts of Eastern Washington. Snow melting in winter doesn’t help in the spring and summer, when communities, farmers and fish in the state’s river basins need it most, the Department of Ecology said.
