It’s the annual ‘thinning of the herd’ in our area. That is, the first round of gusty east wind is already bringing down the weakest of our trees.
As you can see, my KOIN Local 6 colleague Sally Showman was on the scene with this one.
As of late morning, PGE is already reporting scattered power outages of about 1,000 customers. That number may increase as the winds do, too. Mid-day to mid-afternoon should be when they’re at their strongest for most of us.
As of 11am, peak gusts include: 38mph at PDX, 55mph over the northern Coast Range and 58mph at Crown Point in The Gorge. Gust will increase many places–and the east wind becomes increasingly widespread this afternoon!
These are the steady wind speeds our KOIN Wind Cast is predicting by noon Wednesday…with similar speeds all afternoon. Gusts to 35mph-ish (that’s a word, right) should be the max most places in the metro area & I-5 Corridor, with 40-45mph gusts possible near the Gorge and stronger gusts in the western Gorge.
Check back…I’ll post updates when I get them…
1pm Update
PGE power outages are now 1,700 customers. Pacific Power reports 10,500 customers in Oregon without power.
1:25pm Update
New peak gusts worth mentioning: 40mph in Newberg & 35mph in Hillsboro.
New pics from twitter #pdxtst —
Those are quite the winds there! Outflow winds were also present up here in the Fraser valley yesterday (Oct.3rd) dropping relative humidities down to below 25% in the late afternoon.