Region braces for more winter weather impacts

Tens of thousands of Oregon homes and businesses were still without electricity early Tuesday, as the National Weather Service warned of more challenging conditions to come. Portland Public Schools, Salem-Keizer, Eugene 4J and many other districts canceled classes on Tuesday. Portland warned that its sewer system is strained, and the MAX service remains shut down. At least four deaths may be linked to the weather. The National Weather Service is forecasting freezing rain across northwest Oregon and southwest Washington starting late Tuesday morning. State agencies are warning Oregonians to stay off roads and prepare for additional tree damage and power outages. OPB breaking news editor Jeff Thompson fills us in.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller:  This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We are now on the fourth day of snow, cold and ice in western Oregon with more ice in the forecast. The storm has already led to massive tree falls, widespread power outages, messy roads, closed schools and four reported deaths. Jeff Thompson is an editor for OPB News. He joins us now with an update on what’s happened and a sense for what we can expect in the coming days. Jeff, welcome.

Jeff Thompson:  Thanks, Dave. Good to be here.

Miller:  So we’ve had lots of snow and then severe cold and now ice is in the forecast. What does the forecast broadly look like right now?

Thompson:  Well, Dave, I’m gonna take just a little step back. The weather system over the weekend began, basically, with precipitation from the southwest coming up against extremely cold air moving up from the southeast, and that created the cold and snow and sleet that we’ve seen so far. Now that’s happening again, but the ground has been frozen for three days. So everything is gonna fall as frozen rain and create even icier conditions throughout the Willamette Valley. The National Weather Service says we should expect freezing rain accumulations of between about a quarter and a half inch. And then in some places that’ll fall on top of the remaining snow and ice from the last weather system.

So, if you’ve been around the side streets, you know, that’s just gonna be a big icy mess, even on the clear streets, it’s gonna be a mess. Outside of my house, I’m just picturing ice on top of what we’ve got and it’s gonna be rough. Then as far as the timing goes, that freezing rain should be arriving in the Eugene area probably as we speak and then it’ll make its way to the metro area by 3:00pm. The ice storm warnings are in effect through the southern Valley and southern Coast Range until 10:00 tonight. And the northern Valley and Coast Range, the ice storm warnings are in effect through 4 a.m. tomorrow. If there’s any good news, most of Northwest Oregon will see rain and temperatures well above freezing by about midday tomorrow. But then in the gorge, a mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain could continue into tomorrow evening.

Miller:  What’s the worst case scenario right now in terms of severity and timing?

Thompson:  So when I think of the worst case scenario, I think of some of those bigger events we’ve seen in Portland, those nightmare events, where people get stuck. It happens just like this generally. The storm moves in while we’re at work or school, everybody sees it arriving, and tries to get home at the same time. And then you’ve got people stuck in the ice and snow for 7 to 9 hours, having a hard time getting home. At least in this case, many of the schools and businesses are shut down and people are at home already. The last time I checked, I saw more than 300 emergency closures listed in the Metro area. So one thing we have going for us this time around is that we saw the signs early for both storms. And we just have to hope that people are hearing the warnings and staying off the roads as much as possible. The question now really is how long it takes to thaw tomorrow. But then after that, the forecast shows a lot of areas getting to and staying in the forties through at least the weekend.

Miller: You mentioned not going out, especially going on the roads, unless you really need to. But is there anything that experts are saying people should be doing right now to prepare for this, the latest round of foul weather?

Thompson:  I’m gonna say it again: they recommend staying home. When there’s snow on the ground, or even a snow and ice mix like we’ve had for the last couple of days, we hear them saying use chains and traction devices, traction tires. But with the ice that’s coming, even those precautions won’t be much help for most vehicles. So one thing we hear, almost everybody is saying that staying home is absolutely your best option. If you have to head out right now, TriMet buses are still running. They’re running slowly and they’re running with tire chains and probably other transit agencies are doing similar things. But who knows how even that could change depending on conditions. The thing we don’t want and that experts say they don’t want, we can all agree on, is for anybody to head out and then have a hard time making it back home.

Miller:  Have schools, universities, public agencies and parks departments said anything yet about potential closures tomorrow?

Thompson:  We’ve been keeping an eye on it closely. And, at last check, I’ve only seen a couple of business closures and a couple of school closures in the gorge listed for tomorrow. Oh, and the U.S. District Court in Portland just now announced that it will be closed. But I can’t imagine that that list will stay short for long. Some schools just want to wait as long as they can to see if the forecast is going to change before making a decision. I do imagine that as freezing rain starts moving into Lane County and around there, those listings are probably gonna start rolling in.

Miller:  What was the scope of the storm over the weekend? Can you just give us a sense for that?

Thompson:  One thing we’re keeping an eye on… I mean the storm actually covered most of Northwest Oregon and a lot of it hit Lane County. Lane County seems to have the biggest impact. I’m just looking at power outages as an example. The biggest impact there, 30% of their electric customers are still without power down there. So it’s huge down there, but for the most part, it’s been Lane County and everything north.

Miller:  As I mentioned briefly in my intro, this storm hasn’t just been a challenge or a frustration. It has been deadly. What have you been able to learn about the deaths that have been reported?

Thompson:  Yeah, sadly, that’s another indicator of how bad the storm is. We do know that bitter cold and falling trees have killed at least five people in the Metro area over the last few days. The Multnomah County Medical Examiner says two men are suspected of dying from hypothermia, one on Friday, one on Saturday. That confirmation will take a while because the county has to investigate whether there may have been other causes. Separately, Portland fire and rescue said a person died after a tree fell on an RV over the weekend. And then just today, Washington County said an unidentified Tigard resident was found dead in their home yesterday. Multnomah County is going to give us an update this afternoon. So we’ll see what they have to say then.

Miller: What’s happening with warming shelters?

Thompson:  Warming shelters have been open and have been full since Friday. And many of them just announced within the last hour that they will remain open through tomorrow, as those cold weather [and] extreme weather thresholds have been met. They are definitely looking for volunteers. So, if you want to find out how to volunteer for a shelter in your neighborhood, also and if you want to find a warming shelter that you can go to or even find resources for getting yourself to a warming shelter, all of that info is available at 211info.org. Or you can call “211″ to find out where the warming shelters are, find help getting there, and if you want to volunteer because they’ve been very full and they’re staying open for at least one more day.

Miller:  I want to turn to power outages right now. Do you have a sense for how many people are without electricity right now?

Thompson:  We do. Along the Willamette Valley and Coast Range, at one point over the weekend, there were 200,000 people without electricity. This weekend, right now I’m looking at it and it’s about 50,600 people, so less than 51,000 people. So that’s a lot of power that was restored. But there are a lot of people still without power who have been without it for days. And as I said before, in Lane County, the majority of the outages are there and it’s about 30% of their power customers total who are still without. In Multnomah County, it’s still about 12,000 people without power.

Miller:  What have power companies said about the time frame for having service returned?

Thompson:  All they can tell us is they’re working as hard as they can. With so many outages reported it’s sort of on a case by case basis. So if you report an outage, you should be able to follow up and check on the eta of that outage. Or to drill down, you can do what we do at the news desk, you can go to outage.us and it shows you a map of outages and it links to the separate utilities responsible. Even if you’re in a place that’s served by PGE on one side of the street and Pacific Power on the other side of the street, you can visit poweroutage.us and find out what’s going on.

Miller:  But, also, I’m thinking back to the ice in the forecast that we talked about at the beginning. It does seem that more people could lose power than get it back over the next 24 hours?

Thompson:  Right, absolutely. So what they’ve got to do is just prioritize the people who have been without power for days have to be prioritized now, as we’ve got to imagine that with a half inch of ice on an old tree, you put that on a power line or on a transformer, we are going to see more outages. So based on the progress they’ve been doing so far, they are doing heroic work and they’ve got 1,000 people from the utilities out there around the northwest part of the state working to get it back. But absolutely, it’s very likely we’ll see more.

Miller:  We asked listeners on our Facebook page how the weekend storms have impacted them. We got a lot of responses. Carol Clevenberg wrote, “Day 4 stuck at home in Salem.

Thankfully, I have everything I need including heat and power. What looks like snow on the ground is really a two inch thick block of ice. It’s very slippery. I’m feeling very anxious about the predicted ice storm and the possibility of days-long power outages resulting. I live in an older neighborhood with overhead wires and lots of big trees. Looking forward to above freezing temperatures tomorrow.’”

Nyssa Perrin Clark wrote, “Springfield has been heavily hit by ice and thousands are freezing without power. We’ve kept power gratefully but are still being threatened by dangerous trees in our parking strip. We’ve had major branches come down a foot or two from our front door. It’s been terrifying. We feel blessed and super lucky so far. Praying our good fortune holds through round two this afternoon.’”

And we got this from Melody Ghormley in Southeast Portland. She said, “Our gas furnace quit working on Saturday. So cold. Furnace repair people are all booked up, but maybe one will come this afternoon. I hope they make it before the ice storm. Keeping our fingers crossed that we won’t lose power as well.”

Jeff, just to return to the question of the expected thaw. Remind us again, what’s the likely or potential timing here?

Thompson:  It looks like for most of Northwest Oregon, we will see a high in the 40′s tomorrow. So by midday tomorrow, we should see some rain move and see some of this stuff melt. Along the gorge, it’s gonna take a little bit longer, maybe tomorrow evening, maybe even tomorrow night. But then after that, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at least look like they’re gonna be up into the 40s. Probably Saturday too. So I don’t want to get people’s hopes up too much because as you said, there still may be power outages and things like that going on for the next 24 hours. After that, it does look like the temperature rises enough to clear out at least a very icy mess that we’re seeing.

Miller:  Jeff. Thanks very much.

Thompson:  Thank you, Dave.

Miller:  Jeff Thompson is breaking news editor for OPB News.

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