Soggy September continues its onslaught as a hard rain broke historic Vancouver records.
Make that records for Saturday, Sunday and the month of September.
And those records date to 1911.
And as the old rock ‘n’ roll song goes, who’ll stop the rain?
Expect a half-inch to an inch today, said Matthew Cullen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland.
The records, according to Columbian weather blogger Steve Pierce and the National Weather Service:
o New September record of 4.91 inches as of 9 p.m. Sunday. The wettest September on record for Vancouver had been 4.88 inches set back in 1911.
o New daily record set on Saturday in Vancouver of 1.36 inches, breaking the old record of 1.00 set in 1962.
o New daily record set on Sunday in Vancouver of 1.22 inches as of 9 p.m., breaking the old record of 1.01 set in 1944.
o Average rainfall in Vancouver for the month of September is 1.56 inches.
Unlike Saturday, Sunday’s weather caused few major problems for traffic, although standing water on roads was reported.
The weather service issued a flooding advisory at midday Sunday, including Clark County.
Winds caused few problems much of Sunday, but a fatal traffic accident was reported at 8:40 p.m. on state Highway 14 eastbound just west of 164th Avenue. Washington State Patrol said a Honda Accord flipped onto its roof, killing one person and leaving another injured. The driver is under investigation for impaired driving, the patrol said. Other details were not available.
Also late Sunday night, a tree was blocking state Highway 503 at the Yale Bridge near Merwin Reservoir.
There were 161 homes without electricity at 10:30 p.m., according to the Clark Public Utilities outage map. Those outages were in Cascade Park, Camas and the Amboy areas. As of 9 p.m., the top gust at Pearson Field was 30 mph.
For comparison, a gust of 72 mph hit Lincoln City, Ore., on Sunday.
“This is an extremely rare event for so early in the fall season,” Pierce said. In fact, autumn is just eight days old.
“We do expect the rain to continue but not the heavy downpours we’ve seen,” Cullen of the weather service said. “We may have a brief break in the weather, partly sunny skies Thursday and Friday.”
Rain was heavy throughout the Northwest.
“Downtown Portland has received more than 6.21 inches of rainfall for the month of September, which is now the wettest September on record, Pierce said. “Records date back more than 141 years in Portland (1871). This smashes the old record of 5.52″ set back in 1927!”
He is president of the Oregon chapter of the American Meteorological Society.
