The most severe storm of Friday August 9, 2013, was the one you see here.
It was smack dab on top of Government Camp and Mt. Hood–snapping trees along Highway 26 with sudden gusts to at least 45mph, piling up hail 2″ deep near the intersection of Highway 35 and Highway 26 and don’t forget about the pouring rain and lightning.
This snapshot shows you 517 lightning strikes in 30 minutes. This storm was in and around Mt. Hood for more like 90 minutes and created about 2,000 lightning strikes.
This area of low pressure off the Oregon Coast created unstable conditions over much of the northwest on August 9, 2013.
Thunderstorms made it suddenly cold at Sunriver Resort near Bend–these girls braved the hail. A friend of mine tracked a temperature drop of about 20 degrees in 30 minutes. Sudden downpours can certainly do that. Thanks Julie for the picture and to weather watcher Mike for the update!
Storms that hit central Oregon and then Mt. Hood weakened a bit but still slammed the Gorge with hundreds of lightning strikes. The 151 in this shot was in just 30 minutes.
Thanks to Julie for this shot. See the thunderbolt on the left? Could be some sort of commercial for the local power company–and Julie said it was quite a storm.
Total Lightning Strikes For Oregon On August 9, 2013: right around 12,000!! That is incredible. Certainly the state’s biggest lightning day, so far, in 2013.
We had some downpours on the east side of the Portland metro area that created awesome shots like this one from Jeff. Look closely–it’s a double rainbow from Gresham. What a shot!
And with the ‘real’ weather action missing the metro area (again…dang it!) at least we had spectacular colors to finish the day. Al caught this incredible picture of sunset above the Willamette River and downtown Portland. Nice.
I hope you have a great weekend…
Thanks to the generosity of you Americans, we received our biggest rainfall in a day this morning since June! (actually, not very much; just 0.22 inches in about half an hour). Nevertheless, it’s appreciated. Keep the showers coming- just make sure to leave the lightning behind, okay?
I proposed to my fiance right before this storm hit over Lower Twin Lake (We like to say it was God clapping!) We hunkered down in the tent and watched the show (trying to forget about the possibility of danger) At one point the sky and the lake below turned entirely purple. Amazing.
I was camping on Friday when this happened. I happened to see the ominous clouds approaching us and ran to warn the others in our camp. We had 5 mins to put things away when the storm reached us. We could hear this loud scary sound approach us. It was so bad we had to stop the car for a good 20 mins or so. We couldn’t see more than 25 feet in front of us even with the wiper on the fastest setting. When we finally got to Gov’t Camp after what seemed like an eternity driving 10 MPH in that weather, the main streets of Gov’t Camp had a gushing river on the side. The storm drains just couldn’t handle it. Best part was my tent was totally dry lol. I’ve seen similar storms in Wyoming, but never here in Oregon.
Sept.11/13: Bruce, if record high maximum temperatures occurr on this day, are you going to send a new blog message?