Hiya! It’s the Daily Drip, brewed up by your local morning radio daddio to help wake you up on Wednesday, September 12, 2018. Today, like yesterday, we’ll see showers bouncing through the sunbreaks with highs in the 60’s, with instability in the air and thunder in the breeze, so I need to tell you–perhaps jinxing it, so it won’t happen–that conditions are somewhat favorable for development of a small funnel cloud or two. The weekend looks wet, particularly on Saturday. Sunrise 6:45 AM, Sunset 7:27 PM.
Authorities believe they know what killed hiker Diana Bober in the Mt. Hood National Forest: an attack by a cougar. That’s what the wounds point to, and DNA evidence will confirm the species. Diana was taking on the challenging Hunchback Trail in the Salmon-Huckleberry wilderness–she was just two miles from the trailhead–when she was killed. Wildlife officials say they need to find this cougar; it is habituated people now. So that trail has been closed, and the word’s going out to people who live or recreate up there of the cougar’s existence. This is the first recorded killing of a person by a cougar in the wild in Oregon, but cougars are hardly rare. ODFW estimates the state has a cougar population of 16,000.
This is the real deal. As Hurricane Florence buzz-saws toward the Carolina coastline, more than five million people are under hurricane watches or warnings. Storm warnings for tropical winds, mighty surf, and relentless rainfall are posted from Florida clear up to Maine. The latest advisory (as of 0400 PDT) has Florence slowing down overnight, packing 130 MPH winds 600 miles out from Cape Fear, and now likely won’t make landfall until Friday night. The Weather Channel is in 24-hour coverage, and FEMA is in position to do what it does.
(Oregon’s Sen. Jeff Merkley turned up on Rachel Maddow’s program last night to shine the national news light on documents showing that the Trump administration transferred almost $10 million this summer out of the budget for FEMA’s response and recovery budget…and into the budget for ICE, for detention of undocumented families in what he calls “internment camps”).
Over in the Pacific, Olivia has been downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm, but will deliver damaging winds and torrential rains to the entirety of the Hawaiian Islands through tomorrow.
Better reel ’em in…The Oregonian’s great outdoor writer Bill Monroereports that Oregon and Washington fish managers are shutting down all recreational and non-tribal commercial fishing in the Columbia River from Buoy 10 at the river’s mouth clear up to Pasco after today. The emergency action is due to low salmon and steelhead counts at Bonneville Dam.
Hoping to rekindle the flame for a new I-5 bridge over the Columbia–five years after the Washington Senate jilted Oregon at the altar–the Port of Vancouver Commission has declared its support for getting this obvious thing done, already, just as Vancouver’s City Council did last month. Oregon leaders are understandably cool, having been abandoned at great expense before, but they’ll come around–if their Washington counterparts show some affection for light rail.
A curious twist in the story of the Portland woman–a self-published romance novelist–accused of killing her chef husband: it turns out that years ago, Nancy Crampton Brophy wrote a piece titled “How To Murder Your Husband.”
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On day 600 of the Trump administration, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that the US deficit ballooned 222 billion dollars in the last year, and will close in on $1 trillion by the end of this fiscal year, a year earlier than projected. Analysts attribute it to tax cuts and increased spending, which grew 7% while revenue went up by 1%.
Apple will lift the veil on its newest products at an event that begins today at 10 AM Pacific. It’ll be carried live on Twitter, in case you want to follow along on your obsolete iPhone X.
Westside MAX opened 20 years ago today. MAX is a land-use tool to concentrate development in transit-handy precincts and prevent sprawl. Which is why you go bombing along on the fast rural roads that zip through Washington County, and suddenly run into five roundabouts in a row directing you to densely-packed brand new neighborhoods that arise amid the berry fields. Anyway, Westside MAX, happy 20th!
The Pendleton Round-Up begins today. What does it say about Portland that you have to drive 200 miles east…to find the Wild West?
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Here’s a little news-dessert we started, where the headline alone is enough to lighten the load. But sometimes, the full story is called for, so the young iHeart web department wizards–creative Ravenclaws all, but kind as Gryffindors–did us Muggles a kindness by creating and maintaining the link farm, here.
–“Bald Eagle Lands on 9-11 Flag Memorial in Minnesota”
–“U-Haul offering 30 days of free storage for those in path of Hurricane Florence”
–“Portland Police Are Helping Homeless People Get IDs So They Can Access Services And Apply For Housing”
–“‘Ground-breaking’ diabetes insulin drug developed in UK”
–“Pilot Orders Pizza For Passengers Diverted by Storm”
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Portland's Daily Drip 