Happy Memorial Day!
Friday evening we had awesome displays of nature’s fireworks as a large band of thunderstorms rocked our corner of the world. A low over northeast Nevada rotated moisture and instability north over the Cascades, then continued west and south.
I believe this was the loudest, heaviest thunderstorm I have seen in years, mainly because of its persistence before moving south.
There were over 250 lightning strikes detected — which don’t include all the cloud-to-cloud flashes. If you were caught under one of the torrential downpours it surely seemed like a monsoon event. I measured 1.47 inches of rain, which flooded the streets curb to curb. Other areas had half that and some hardly any.
Ice pellets covered the ground in some locations, ranging to over pea size. Strong winds scattered twigs and branches about. It didn’t take temperatures long to fall. As the storms reached my home in Salmon Creek, I was basking in sunshine and 73 degrees. Later, the mercury dropped a good 20 degrees.
