 |
Effort to save heron an ordeal
Annual quilt and button show a
little slice of history right here in Newberg
Carriers will pick up more than mail
| Skies
put on a show |
Funnel cloud sightings
are reported around the
area as Tuesday's storm moves through |
By Christie Scotty, Newberg Graphic
Reporter
Email Christie at cscotty@eaglenewspapers.com
|
 Funnel clouds, hail, rain, lightning and thunder showered down from Oregon
skies Tuesday night, creating a display rarely seen in this area.
Some of the wildest sights were in Yamhill County, where a funnel cloud (a
tornado that has not touched the ground) was reported near McMinnville.
Mark O’Malley, a meteorological intern at the National Weather Service,
said funnel cloud reports and photos also came in from Tigard, although there was no way
of determining whether it was one cloud or separate occurrences.
On Parrett Mountain overlooking Newberg, Len Harold was headed to his barn
around 6:30 p.m. when he stopped to watch the recurrent flashes of lightning in the sky.
When he spotted the funnel clouds, he went inside to grab a camera.
“We watched the storms for a while and took pictures while the two
storms merged and went over Bald Peak and on to Tigard,” Harold said.
Harold added that in his roughly two-and-a-half years living in the area, he
has watched thunderheads move around the valley several times, but has never seen a funnel
cloud.
Others who have lived in northwestern Oregon for many years called the
National Weather to say they’d never seen a storm with such sustained lightning,
which lasted hours in some areas. O’Malley said that’s because the conditions
that caused the storm are rare in this part of the country.
“We had an upper-level disturbance with cold air aloft, and then we
heated at the surface which made the air unstable,” O’Malley said.
“Normally the atmosphere is not very unstable in the Pacific Northwest ... normally
the ocean keeps us very temperate.”
With the volatile atmosphere, the storm spread from Salem to Portland.
Reports of hail were heavy in the Salem area, lightning and thunder were spotted
throughout the region, and funnel clouds were reported between McMinnville and Tigard.
O’Malley said that because funnel clouds by definition do not touch
ground and cause measurable damage and because they are too small for radar to detect,
there is no way to measure their speed. The main danger from funnels, he said, is to
aircraft.
Lessie Dale, owner of Newberg’s Sportsman Airpark, said Tuesday’s
storm hit late enough in the day that it didn’t interrupt any planned flights. If
pilots had been scheduled to fly during the storm, she said, it would have been a
deterrent.
“That’s something you stay completely away from,” Dale said of
both funnel clouds and thunderstorms. “Once pilots see those they pretty much head
for the ground. They do a ‘quick retreat,’ as we say it.”
There were no serious injuries or damage reported in the storm; about 200 PGE
customers in Washington County and North Portland reportedly lost power for a short while
due to lightening.
No further storms are expected in the area, as a large, forceful weather system moves in,
O’Malley said. |
|
From May 3, 2003,
Newberg Graphic
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