It’s Friday! We win! Today is January 26, 2018, a showery and 45-ish day, leading into a drenching rain beginning tonight and not letting up until late Saturday night. Then Sunday looks mostly dry. Sunrise 7:38 AM, sunset 5:08 PM.
It’s snowed all night in the Cascades, and there’s a great abundance yet to come. A member of the Mt. Hood Meadows ski patrol was seriously injured in an avalanche while working on slope preparation in an area not yet open to the public. Fortunately, ski patrol members are equipped with airbags; he deployed his and was quickly located and dug out.
This weekend’s storm could bring two inches of rain to the valley and four to the coast, and since the rivers are already running high and the soils are well-saturated, there’s a good possibility of riverbank flooding and neighborhood water issues. You’ve been through it before and loved the sun all the more for it.
Spring is only 53 days away!
Oregon’s disaster readiness gets a kick in the pants in a report from the state Audits Division, which found serious gaps in preparations for catastrophes ranging from quakes to volcanos to terrorist attacks. Half our counties have emergency operations centers located in hazard zones. Fixes to deficiencies that were found during the 2016 multi-state Cascadia Rising exercise are merely in draft form in Oregon, while Washington wrapped theirs up in six months. It’s a coincidence, I guess, but today is the 318th anniversary of a 9.2 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake off the Oregon coast that sent a tsunami crashing into Japan. That was the last major rupture in that zone. The plate tectonics that will deliver the next one don’t care if we’re ready or not.
Firefighters came running to Grant High School when smoke began billowing from the basement. Turns out that a piece of heavy equipment being used in the renovation of the old building caught fire. No students were there; they’ve been relocated to the Marshall campus during the remodel.
The public memorial for Vera Katz, Portland’s three-term mayor from 1993 to 2005, is Sunday, 2 PM, at the Portland Art Museum. She could be controversial and was full of big dreamy ideas, and she was always glad to see you, always available to work together, and expected no less of the citizens here.
The New York Times reports that President Trump ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller last June, but backed off when his lawyer threatened to resign. Trump’s reaction: “Fake news, folks. A typical New York Times fake story.”
The White House is out with an immigration plan will offer a path to citizenship for 1.8 million immigrants living in the country illegally. The Breitbart wing of the GOP is aflame over this, calling the plan “Don’s Amnesty Bonanza.” But the plan also ends family-based immigration policies (called “chain migration”), and puts $25 billion into a border wall.
Grammy awards are Sunday night. Time has been carved out to allow award recipients to express themselves on matters such as #metooand #timesup.
On this date thirty years ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash musical The Phantom of the Opera debuted on Broadway.
Today is the 60th birthday of Ellen DeGeneres. Quote: “Most comedy is based on getting a laugh at somebody else’s expense. And I find that that’s just a form of bullying in a major way. So I want to be an example that you can be funny and be kind, and make people laugh without hurting somebody else’s feelings.”
3H!
–“Student raises thousands to save puppy”
–“Hawaii Is Paying People Who Care For Elderly Relatives”
–“Real-life fairy godmother donates prom dresses to less fortunate girls”
–“Iraq veteran and puppy reunited in US after months apart”
–“Elderly Man Sets Up His Christmas Tree Outside Every Year And Decorates It With Supplies For The Needy”
–“Good Samaritan got out of his car to give his down jacket to a man shivering on the side of the road.”
Double your Radio Daddio exposure today….I’m doing morning news on 1190 KEX. That’s a fun challenge, but it also means I need to dash out the door, rather than spending time proofreading thi
Portland's Daily Drip 