Heavy snow disrupts life in much of Western Oregon, social service providers and officials scramble to respond

Western Oregon was blanketed Wednesday and early Thursday with nearly 11 inches of snow, which disrupted commutes and activities across the region. The heavy snow was the second biggest in Portland history and came as a surprise to forecasters, who had predicted a much lighter dusting. We talk with National Weather Service meteorologist Colby Neuman and Oregon Department of Transportation spokesperson Katherine Benenati, and get reactions from Newport Mayor Dean Sawyer and Rachel Pearl with Multnomah County’s department of human services.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Almost 11 inches of snow fell at the Portland Airport yesterday. It was the second largest one day snowfall there in recorded history, and the most in 80 years. The snow clogged roads, closed schools, brought traffic to a standstill, stranded motorists. And if the forecast is correct, it won’t be melting for a few more days. We’re going to bring you a few perspectives on the storm today. We start with Colby Neuman. He is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland. Colby, welcome back to Think Out Loud.

Colby Neuman: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Miller: What happened yesterday from a meteorologist’s perspective?

Neuman: We had an unusually cold storm system move out of the gulf of Alaska and out of Canada, into the region. And low pressure ended up stalling out over the north Oregon coast. And that helped draw in cold air through the Gorge. And then we had moist air essentially overrunning that cold air that was coming in off the Pacific and a band of snow set up and it primarily affected Multnomah and Clark Counties in the afternoon and then it shifted westward into Washington County during the evening hours.

Miller: The weather app on my phone called for some snow, but nothing close to what actually happened. What made this weather event seemingly harder to predict than others?

Neuman: Well, when we get these low pressures that end up sitting or stalling out somewhere over Northwest Oregon or Southwest Washington or off the coast, where they end up and how strong they end up being, that’s a really uncertain forecast. So if they’re just a little bit closer to the area or a little bit stronger than what our model shows, then we can be sort of in the sweet spot, so to speak. If we’re not, and it’s just slightly farther offshore, a little bit weaker, then we have an event like we did a week and a half ago and no one really knows. We were a little bit cooler than normal, but we stayed dry and we had essentially no snow in the Portland Metro [area]. So it’s very small changes, with the position of these lows, makes a huge difference in whether or not we get snow.

Miller: A spokesman for the Portland Bureau of Transportation told KATU last night, “we’re seeing suffering all over the city because of the magnitude of the storm;. a storm that arrived this afternoon, that was not the storm we were told to prepare for.” Does the National Weather Service give specific forecasts to agencies like PBOT or ODOT?

Neuman: We do. And we did not message the low probability of this bigger event and there were probabilities of this happening, but they were generally less than 5%. And we didn’t message those chances of an 8-inch or 10-inch snowstorm. So some of it actually comes down to us relaying those chances and then letting the decision makers decide whether or not that chance is high enough for them to act or not.

Miller: But because, from your models, a 1 in 20 chance of what ended up happening, that wasn’t a high enough chance for you to relay that to these agencies?

Neuman: Well, I won’t say it’s not high enough. These situations are tough, when it’s this very low probability event happening, of how much information is too much information, that people tune us out, versus, are we hiding information or is that what’s perceived? And so we have this balance of trying to present too much information and then the message gets lost or do we present enough, and then, we have something like this happen. So it’s a balance of trying to find the right messaging and making sure that the people that are making decisions can get the information they need to make the decisions appropriately.

Miller: Just briefly, with the cold expected now to linger for a few days, when is the snow or the packed snow and ice likely to actually melt?

Neuman: Today there will be a little bit of thawing. But in general, today is not gonna help things. Tomorrow, I’d say there’s a better shot that we’re gonna climb up into the mid-thirties and see a little bit more relief, but that’s only gonna be on surfaces that get direct sunlight. Any surfaces that are shaded are still gonna stay ice covered, certainly through tomorrow. And then Saturday, it looks like we should see temperatures moderate a little bit more and climb up closer to 40 and so we should start to see a little bit more relief then. But even then, when we get this much snow on the ground, like we saw in January of 2017, it’s hard for it to melt off. We do have the advantage that the sun is quite a bit higher than it is in early to mid-January, like we saw in the 2017 event. So the sun will be helping things out, but certainly today is going to be cold enough that what little melting does happen will definitely freeze very quickly this evening and we’ll probably see conditions just as icy tomorrow morning.

Miller: Parents take note. Colby Neuman, thanks very much.

Neuman: Yeah, thank you.

Miller: That’s Colby Neuman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland. We’re talking right now about the nearly 11 inches of snow that fell in the Portland area yesterday.

We turn now to what this meant for state highways and what it could mean going forward. Katherine Benenati a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation? Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Katherine Benenati: Thanks for having me.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for what roads were like at the peak of the problems yesterday evening?

Benenati: It was really tough out there and there were a lot of frustrated drivers, I’ll tell you that. Snow hit right at the worst time it can hit and that was during rush hour and we saw a lot of trucks, a lot of buses and a lot of vehicles getting stuck and some of those were abandoned on the road. And that makes our job harder, as you can imagine, because we need to get in there and clear the roads.

Miller: You just heard my conversation with Colby Neuman, he was talking there about the challenges of relaying information about relatively low probability versions of the storm to agencies like yours. And then we could hear some regret, I think it’s fair to say, that they didn’t give you a clearer picture of just how bad this could have been. How different would the situation have been on Oregon roads? Obviously, what they tell you is not going to change what falls from the sky. All it could do is give you and other agencies more chances to prepare for that snow. How different would it have been if they had said, “this really could be bad?”

Benenati: Sure, well, first, let me say that the National Weather Service has been great partners. Hi Colby. And we appreciate the work that they do. This is really tough all around and we have trouble messaging sometimes too because one of our primary messages is, “stay home if you can.” Well, a lot of people can’t, especially if they’re expecting an inch or two and we get 10. So it hit at the worst time and a lot of people were out on the roads trying to get home.

So I don’t know that having more advanced notice would have helped change the situation. I can say that our crews were working around the clock since yesterday morning, so we were really trying to prepare the roads ahead of time, but in these kinds of situations, de-icer only gets you so far, when you put de-icer down, that’s supposed to prevent the snow from sticking and packing, but that only works if we have enough time to get it down and if the roads stay dry while we’re doing it.

Miller: What are your top priorities right now?

Benenati: Well, we still have a lot of abandoned vehicles out there and so today, where we’ve been opening ramps intermittently….if you check TripCheck and we hope you do, especially if you are trying to head out the next few days, there are still a lot of closures. We’ve been trying to have intermittent openings that will allow some of the passenger vehicles to be cleared or redirected and we’re actively checking those abandoned vehicles to make sure that there’s no one in there. And then we’re also bringing in additional resources from around the state - plows, graders, incident responders - so that they can help those Portland crews out.

Miller: The sense I got from Colby Neuman at the end there, was that with the slight thought that it would freeze again tonight, that the roads tomorrow in the Portland area could be at least as snowy, maybe even more icy tomorrow morning. That makes me think that whatever school closures there were today will also be in place tomorrow. Is that your gut feeling as well, given that ODOT does not control, say, PPS decisions?

Benenati: Oh, I don’t want to speculate, but I’m gonna try again to say, please stay home. If you can at all stay home. We often see refreezing and with this much snow, it’s really hard to tell what is underneath it, but we know that there’s a lot of precipitation and that can take days to clear and we have a lot of work to do on the roads. So our crews would appreciate it as well.

Miller: Katherine Benenati, thanks very much.

Benenati: Thanks so much.

Miller: That was Katherine Benenati, spokesperson for ODOT.

We turn now to efforts to help people experiencing homelessness in this snow and cold. Rachel Pearl is the deputy director of the Multnomah County Department of Human Services. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Rachel Pearl: Thanks, Dave. Happy to be here.

Miller: Thanks for joining us. Can you give us a sense for the warming center options that are available right now?

Pearl: Yeah. Last night we opened four, with the fifth that had some kind of backup spots available in the Portland Metro area, and currently we have three shelters open, which are Arbor Lodge, Salvation Army and our East Portland Community Center. And if folks need to get more information on that, they can always go to multco.us/cold.

Miller: When you say currently, meaning operating during the day, is that because . . . we actually got a comment on Facebook from Donna Cohen saying, “I’m wondering why the county is apparently tossing, insisting on tossing people out of night shelters during the day on a day like this?” So there are 24/7 warming shelters right now?

Pearl: Yeah. So when we’re planning, we’re also talking to the National Weather Service and looking at forecasts to try to understand what is going to be happening and how we anticipate if we’re gonna meet thresholds to open shelters. And we definitely didn’t anticipate the accumulation of snow, similar to everyone else, and what everyone else is saying. So we thought that we would see the conditions where folks could be outside during the day. And obviously that changed, and so we switched gears and really pulled in a lot of resources, our staff and volunteers, to be able to keep those shelters open.

And we did see a lot of challenge for our folks to be able to even get into those spaces last night, to open those shelters and create that space and capacity for our guests to be able to come in and have a warm place to be. And we also saw increased difficulty in our guests being able to arrive, which is not typical. When we open our sites, we see folks kind of arriving shortly after or already there. And it was a really slow trickle last night, which definitely made us nervous and concerned for how folks were doing. So we saw those numbers increase throughout the night, and we were definitely relieved to see that, for sure, because we recognize that people need to be inside.

Miller: What should housed people in the area do if they have specific concerns about somebody who is living outside?

Pearl: We’re really happy to be asked that question. I think, in these times we really all need to be paying attention to each other and looking out for each other. I think folks saw that last night with just anyone who was trying to just commute or get home, never mind if you’re living outside. So if you see someone that seems to be unprepared or under dressed for the conditions, you can certainly contact 211 and ask for some outreach support. If you see someone that looks like they might be in a life threatening situation or is not responsive, we recommend folks contact emergency services to make sure that person can get the support that they need.

Miller: Rachel Pearl, thanks very much.

Pearl: Thank you.

Miller: Rachel Pearl is deputy director of the Multnomah County Department of Human Services.

We end our brief tour of the effects of the snow in western Oregon right now with Dean Sawyer. He is the mayor of Newport which also saw some snow. Dean Sawyer, welcome.

Dean Sawyer: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Miller: It’s good to have you on. How much snow did you get?

Sawyer: Well, at the beach we got about 2″. At my house, I’m about a mile inland, we got 5″ and East County got about 11″ last night.

Miller: What did that mean for roads and for the functioning of the city?

Sawyer: Our snowplows were out early this morning doing the major streets and arterials. ODOT was doing Highway 20 early this morning. There were a couple of crashes on Highway 20 with some semis that blocked Highway 20 earlier this morning. It is now open. Highway 34 from Waldport to Corvallis is currently closed. There’s too many trees down so ODOT has closed 34, but here in town everybody’s moving around with no problem. All the streets are currently just wet.

Miller: But having people get there remains an issue, it seems. And this is when an annual boost of tourism dollars, Seafood and Wine Festival, was supposed to start tonight. Before we get to the effects of the snowstorm on the festival, can you just give us a sense for how important it is, in this off season?

Sawyer: The Seafood and Wine Festival started 46 years ago. They wanted to bring tourists to the coast in the winter and so they started it in February and it’s been very successful. Each year keeps getting bigger. About 20,000 people a year come here for this weekend. Unfortunately, they did postpone today. So if you have tickets for today, don’t worry. They will be good all weekend long and if you can’t make it at all, they will refund your tickets. They are anticipating opening tomorrow at noon. So if you want to come over tomorrow, that would be great. Just watch TripCheck to make sure that the roads are clear. Right now it’s about 40° here, so a lot of the snow is melting. We are concerned overnight, it’s going to be 22° here and there will be some freezing in the morning on some of the roads. So again, just make sure before you come over to check the road conditions, but it will go tomorrow and we will have a lot of fun tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday.

Miller: It’s very easy for adults and parents too, to lose their childlike sense of excitement and wonder at the snow, because we often have to deal with the minor issues or the major issues, some of them life threatening in terms of traffic or safety or people experiencing homelessness. But to just go to the joy for one second, can you give us a sense for what it looks like, what your view is of the water or the beach or the hills right now?

Sawyer: We get snow here about once every five to seven years. So when it snows, it’s just gorgeous. And right now it’s beautiful. There’s about four inches of snow on the ground in the hills, as you said. The Bayfront is just beautiful. There’s a crabber sitting in the bay right now, a recreational boat is getting crab. The kids are just having fun. People bring out paddle boards to sled on. We don’t normally have sleds here, but everybody has fun when the snow is out. A lot of the local stores are open, the restaurants are open and so there is that going on. All the schools are closed. The Oregon Community College is closed. The Oregon Coast Aquarium is also closed, but as you said, when people come out, when the kids come out, they just have a ball.

We did have our warming shelter open here last night. They’ve decided to stay open all day. So if anybody needs anything today and then tonight, the warming shelter will be available for those that need those services.

Miller: Dean Sawyer, thanks very much.

Sawyer: Thank you.

Miller: Dean Sawyer is the mayor of Newport.

Contact “Think Out Loud®”

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show, or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.