What Caused Oregon's Unusual Lightning Storm?

[Ivan Seeking]

This afternoon we had about as strong of a lightning storm as I've seen in the twenty years that we've been here. The weather was coming from the SE, which is somewhat unusual, and it may be that we saw what Eastern Oregon [the other side of the mountains] normally sees. I'm not sure what time the lightning started, but it ran almost continuously for quite long time; I would say at least an hour of intense activity. I was trying to conference call but couldn't hear the conversation at times because of the non-stop noise.

I saw where a kid was hit by lightning in Portland. Apparently he will be okay but was in serious condition. They are saying that Portland has had at least several hundred strikes.

 

[chroot]

It must be global warming.

- Warren

 

[lisab]

I saw the Doppler just a few minutes ago on the evening news...wow, it looked like a fantastic storm!

Om...are you OK?

 

[waht]

If you kill a butterfly in China then it's going to rain in Oregon two months later.

 

[elect_eng]

If you kill a butterfly in China then it's going to rain in Oregon two months later.

Well someone must have massacred a whole species at the start of spring!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I saw the Doppler just a few minutes ago on the evening news...wow, it looked like a fantastic storm!

It was! I only wish I could have stopped to enjoy it.

The down side is that I do worry about active storms directly over us. We have some of the tallest trees in the area - one old growth tree is at least 180 feet tall. We had a storm yesterday as well, and I think there was a hit near my office. I saw the flash from the house, and based on delay between the flash and the sound, it couldn't have been more than a 1000 feet away. My office is about 500 feet away from that point and in the same direction. I then noticed that my retransmitter for the Direct TV wasn't working and we don't have any TV up in the house. There goes $300. [it is a long story, by I have to retransmit the DTV from the office up to the house using a spendy little device developed for NASA]

 

[Evo]

Reminds me of a freak thing that happened several years ago. We had several consecutive nights of the loudest thunder ever recorded here. No one could sleep and it was on the news that the general population was effected from lack of sleep and violent crime and domestic violence had greatly increased. Everyone looked frazzled. Never seen anything like it

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Cripes, that reminds me. When the storm hit yesterday, at least one local hospital was hit with a flood of asthma patients. One worker guessed that perhaps thirty people came in within a very short period of time. She had never seen anything like it before.

Weird.

 

[Moonbear]

If the storm and prevailing winds were coming from an unusual direction, perhaps pollutants that are not normally in the area got blown in (i.e., from CA) and aggravated people's asthma more than usual.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

If the storm and prevailing winds were coming from an unusual direction, perhaps pollutants that are not normally in the area got blown in (i.e., from CA) and aggravated people's asthma more than usual.

Yeah, it may have come from here. We had a whole bunch of lightning just the other night and it flew right past, gone in about an hour or two.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

If the storm and prevailing winds were coming from an unusual direction, perhaps pollutants that are not normally in the area got blown in (i.e., from CA) and aggravated people's asthma more than usual.

Good point! To the SE we have a large set of mountains with the flora in full bloom. I don't know the statistics, but I'm quite sure this is a relatively rare weather pattern. We get weather from the NW, SW, W, N, or NE, but almost never the SE.