Seasons Greetings & Happy Festivus from The Pavilion

The Day After

Yesterdays forecast was pretty much spot-on.

As predicted, the Oregon coast received hurricane force winds, up to 114 mph. The peak inland gusts were in the 60 + mph range and arrived pretty much on schedule, around 8:30 pm. Today Portland General Electric is reporting 245,000 "customers" lost power during the night. In some areas there was significant damage, mostly involving pine trees falling onto houses. Local news coverage is depicting scenes of homes that were smashed open by tree trunks, slicing clean through their roofs. A truly unsettling sight and an important reminder of the costly hazards posed by tall trees located too close to dwellings. Given that specific factor, today I feel quite fortunate. There was no damage sustained here at The Pavillion. However the power of the wind was definitely felt and left a couple of visible reminders; the basketball hoop with it's weighted base is now lying on it's side near the street curb and a section of fence in the back yard is sagging over. Thankfully the trees here weathered yet another storm without incident...

Batten Down The Hatches (again)

Maybe this blog should be called "PDX Weather Hype."
The latest word has it that there's another big storm a' comin and the news outlets are eagerly responding as per their usual fashion. Unlike the previous dire warnings though, this storm appears to have more potential behind it. Satellite maps show the jet stream furiously T-boning the West coast in conjunction with a low pressure front. Local meteorologists have been comparing the possibly expected wind speeds to those of the December storm back in 1995. That was another event that didn't quite live up to it's predicted ferocity but the metro area did experience some very strong wind gusts that did more than just a little damage. At the peak of that storm, I was standing in the backyard with my video camera rolling and happened to catch a tall, skinny pine tree blow down in a neighbor's adjoining yard. With that in mind, I once again consider those two very tall pine trees here on this property. Although I take these scary forecasts with the appropriate grains of salt and chuckle at the talking heads whipping themselves into a frenzy, a large tree coming down on a house is no ones idea of funny. The fact remains, it's known to happen around here sometimes...

The main brunt of this storm is predicted to arrive sometime around 8:00 PM tonight. Already I'm observing some healthy wind gusts here at The Pavillion. The camera batteries are charged and any interesting developments will be noted here throughout the evening. I'm hoping it won't be anything too interesting...