Doesn’t it just figure that right after I leave for a 10 day vacation we have a big storm? I missed the storm, and what’s worse, it must have caused a brief power fluctuation which knocked out my router. So my web site was effectively down from May 2 until May 10 when I was able to reboot my router. Even though my server was up and I was still recording the weather. Gotta love technology sometimes.

So my apologies for the downtime. I checked the site remotely, saw that it was down, and there was nothing I could do about it until I got back.

Our vacation was to the central California coast – Big Sur, Monterey, Point Reyes. I hope to be posting pictures in the next couple of weeks. It was nice to get away, and the weather there was much nicer than it apparently was here in Portland last week.

Well that was quite interesting yesterday when the front moved through. The winds had been calm all day, and then suddenly at 6:15 PM they started roaring. Initially they were from the SSW, but they quickly changed to the WNW. I recorded many gusts above 20 mph. But more impressively, the average wind speed was 9 mph for the next hour. It doesn’t sound like much, but for my area that is very high. It’s only the 5th day I’ve ever recorded an average wind speed that high for an hour or more. And the last time was more than six years ago. I called in a report to the NWS, even though the gust speed was less than there reporting threshold. There were some branches coming down, and because of my location, I don’t get accurate wind speed measurements when the winds are coming from the south.

In other news I made a few minor changes to the site. I fixed some old broken links, and I finally fixed a display issue in some browsers that was mangling the header of the page. I also added a logo and link for CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network). I started participating about a year ago. Anyone can join, you don’t need much in the way of equipment, just a specific rain gauge that costs about $25.00. If I set the link up properly, it should take you directly to my daily report. (I’m station number OR-WS-30).

Finally, when will spring really arrive? March has been quite cool this year. It looks like it will be the first March since I’ve been recording where we will not have at least one day that reaches 60 degrees. In 2004 we had 13 days above 60 and 3 days above 70. Well, I’m sure it will be here soon enough. I’m anxious to get out on the golf course once we start having some nice weather.

Our season of wild weather continues. In 36 hours from 7 PM on 12/31/2008 through 7 AM on 1/2/2009 I recorded 4.15” inches of rain. That is far and away the heaviest rain storm I have recorded. Ok, technically two tenths of an inch of rain was the water content from the snow that fell at the end of the storm. In the last twelve hours of the storm – from 7 PM on 1/1/2009 to 7 AM on 1/2/2009 I recorded 2.07 inches of rain. And I can’t quite be sure when it actually stopped because it ended as snow. But I think it was around 3 AM, which means we got over two inches of rain in approximately 8 hours.

At least the high winds never materialized in the Portland area, although they did along the coast.

As could be expected, there are numerous flooding and mudslide problems this morning. Many roads are closed, and there are slippery conditions from the snow in some area.

We should get a couple of days or relative calm today and tomorrow, but the National Weather Service is warning of another very moist storm coming in late Sunday. If river levels don’t drop quickly, I fear that may cause even worse flooding than this storm that just ended. What a way to start the new year.

Happy New Year everyone.

Well it looks like out extended batch of winter weather is just about over. We received a total of about 26 inches of ice and snow during the two weeks. There are about 7.5 inches left on the ground now. As well as numerous branches that came down from the weight of the snow and ice.

And we had a power surge or brown out a couple of days ago that caused my web server to go down for a few hours overnight. What’s worse is that it’s showing signs of failing. I don’t have a backup server, so if it fails, my site could be down for an extended period of time. I may try to do some short-term fixes this weekend which may require me to bring the server down temporarily. I’m somewhat afraid to reboot it, I fear it may not come back up if I shut it down. But sooner or later I have to, so I might as well get it over with.

The snow totals are getting unbelievable! Overnight last night we got six more inches of snow, and during the day today we got another three, mostly in the morning. I have called in numerous reports to the National Weather Service. There are about 16 inches of snow on the ground now, and quite a few inches have evaporated, compressed, or sublimated. At this point I forgot how much snow fell yesterday afternoon, I think it was about 2.5 inches. Assuming that is correct, we have received a total of 25 inches of snow or ice since last Sunday (12-14-2008).

Several very large branches came crashing down today from the weight of the snow and ice, but fortunately there was no damage. Two of the branches were about 20 feet long.

And while I was outside shoveling in the afternoon, an amazing thing happened. A hawk came swooping straight at me from out of the blue squawking as he dove towards me. I literally had to duck to avoid him, and he had a small bird dangling from his mouth. I don’t really know if that was weather-related or not, but I get very few hawks in my yard.

The forecast right now is still questionable for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. But there is a reasonable chance we will get one more significant snowfall during that time period; a winter storm watch has been posted. It mostly seems to be a question of whether it will remain cold enough to be snow, or whether it will warm up enough to be rain. Or worse, freezing rain. We should know more tomorrow afternoon. The temperature here never even made it to 25 today.

I also finally did post some pictures of the storm – you can see them here. I took a few more today, I haven’t had a chance to post those yet.