Sunday’s wind storm certainly lived up to expectations and in some cases even exceeded them. As usual, Rattlesnake Mountain brought home the prize for highest wind gust – 82 mph. People rarely go up there, though, so what about in the lowlands? Helix, which is north of Pendleton, recorded a gust of 74 mph. This is the only place that reached above 70 in the lowlands that I’ve seen, but six locations around the Columbia Basin got above 60. A list of the strongest gusts around the area is the featured image of this post.
Perhaps the most known issue that the storm caused was an accident on Interstate 82 near Coffin Road south of Kennewick. Here, dust from nearby recently plowed fields obscured drivers’ vision causing a multi-car accident. This accident forced WSDOT to close westbound lanes (toward Kennewick) of the freeway for a while to give crews space to clean things up. Several people were transported to area hospitals with non-critical injuries.
Road closures due to wind weren’t restricted to around the Tri-Cities. This regional event caused damage that forced the closure of Interstate 84 from Pendleton to La Grande due to downed power lines. Oregon Route 11 was closed between Pendleton and Milton-Freewater due to crashes and wind-blown debris. One of these crashes was a semi that was flipped over. Oregon Route 204 was also shut down for a while because of the wind.
Tumbleweeds front and center several times this winter with road closures and buried yards. This time around, Van Giesen (SR 224) was closed in West Richland thanks to drifting tumbleweeds. WSDOT again brought out a snow plow to clear the road. Remember that tumbleweeds can create a serious fire hazard, so it is important to clear them before the fire danger increases as things warm up.
The wind also damaged power lines, knocking out power to many. At one point, Hermiston had over 800 customers without power – primarily in the city center along US 395. About 300 people also lost power in Irrigon. In Prosser, a tree limb fell on a power line. This cut power to just under 800 customers.
This wind was the result of a cold front that crossed the Pacific Northwest, and wind wasn’t the only thing it brought to the region. The Cascades got another decent round of snow, with some stations in the Snoqualmie Pass area recording around 9″ between 10am Sunday and 10am Monday. In Baker City, the temperature dropped from 55° to 37° in the 12 minutes following the passage of the front.
Decently strong rain fell in the Tri-Cities with the passage of the front, amounting to 0.02″ at the airport in Pasco. This hardly puts a dent in our drought conditions, but we’ll take what we can get. The temperature drop at Pasco was less intense than Baker City, but still notable – 6° in five minutes.
It looks like this week will be a rather uneventful one, with partly cloudy skies and high temperatures slowly rising from Monday’s 55° to around 60° for Friday in the Tri-Cities. This is somewhat above average, which is in the low-50s. Lows should be within a few degrees of freezing for the work week.
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The featured image is a list of the highest wind gusts observed in my coverage focus area on Sunday. My coverage focus area is Benton, Franklin, and Walla Walla Counties in Washington as well as Umatilla and Morrow Counties in Oregon.
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