Members in the PNW, hunker down.....

We had a little rain lately... the falls changed quickly!!!! Tomorrow afternoon into the evening we get hammered by wind... biggest storm in 10+ years they say......

 

Tornado in Manzanita, North of Tillamook on the coast,,,

 

Didn't really get the winds predicted here either. More like a normal coastal winter storm. Some lightning, though...

 

In '62 I lived with my parents up by the Sunset Highway above Beaverton. The winds started in the afternoon, and I can remember using my jacket as a sail, while on my bicycle, to propel me up the street. It was great fun as a kid and I remember it being unusually warm. The skies darkened and we were called in by our parents because the winds had gotten so strong we had trouble staying on our feet. By late afternoon, can't remember exactly the time; my Dad and I watched from the kitchen window as a roof from a home one block over sailed into the air and smashed into one of the brick homes up the street. That was when he said we were going to the basement.

My Dad sent me down stairs with my Mother and Sister and he went out in the storm to check on a neighbor across the street. The explosion of the roof crashing into the house on the other block had sent debris flying through the air. I remember seeing a 2X6 stuck in the side of the home he was headed to. The lady who lived there was alone, her husband was stuck in Portland and unable to get home in the storm. She had two small kids and he found her and the children in the garage hiding under the car. She refused to come over to shelter in our basement and Dad said that several large timbers had been blown the entire length of the house.

I can remember hearing the howling of the winds well into the night and the sound of explosions as some of the large Douglas fir trees in the green belt behind our home were snapped like twigs. I remember the Willamette river being so swollen that it was near the deck of one of the bridges and a tug that was attempting to clear debris from the bridge turtling and sinking in the river. The rains were extreme, easily 5 times what this last storm brought. No wonder those of us who lived through it made an effort to prepare.