Good morning, elves! We’re swinging into the last working week of the year, for most; it’s Monday, December 17, 2018. Seems like we always have weather adventures to complicate this task-packed week, and this year, it’s rain and wind. Substantial abundances of rain are expected to start this afternoon, with flooding a possibility tomorrow and Wednesday. It’s a good old Pineapple Express, with radar depicting a smear of precipitation in a straight line from Hawaii to your front yard. As the song says, there ain’t no sunshine, but there wouldn’t be much anyway: With the Solstice coming Friday, we’ll have no more than eight hours and forty-two minutes of daylight on any day this week. Sunrise 7:45 AM, sunset 4:28 PM. It’s Day 351 of 2018, with two weeks to go.
Might be a good time to round up the flashlight batteries and charge your devices, just in case. This is the kind of storm that puts out the lights. And we have all kinds of watches and warnings for gusts to 60 and 3- to 6-inch rainfall at the Coast and in the coast range, and gusts to 45 with 1 to 3 inches of rain in the inland valleys including the Portland area. Plus we’ll see sharp rises of our local rivers: Of particular concern are the Upper Tualatin River in Washington County, the Clackamas River in Clackamas County, and Johnson Creek in Multnomah and Clackamas counties.
The Christmas Ships are off tonight, but they’re scheduled to be back on both rivers for three nights starting tomorrow weather permitting. And the weather does not look good.
The Oregon Coast Aquarium is giving TLC to a second large sea turtle that was carried by the currents out of its warm Southern California habitat and flung onto a cold Oregon beach. These are endangered species, and both are female of hatchling-producing age. At last check, though, both are doing OK.
There was an explosion in a restaurant in Portland’s sister city of Sapporo, Japan. Over 40 were injured, though all survived. The cause hasn’t been revealed, but patrons say they smelled natural gas.
Portland’s television-viewing public has come through in a pinch and saved Radio Cab’s annual cornucopia of Christmas turkey dinners for families in needs. Supplies were looking disturbingly scant just two weeks ago, so a couple of our local news channels shined the cameras on them, and now they have food to spare.
People are wondering why TriMet is promoting Scientology videos at MAX stops. It’s because they lost an Oregon Supreme Court ruling saying that denial of ad space to anyone is an infringement of rights.
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Oregon’s Sen Jeff Merkley, Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and other Democratic members of Congress toured a tent city in West Texas, where they said that 2700 immigrant teens are being held in a military-style camp at a cost of a million dollars per day. They want it shut down. Both Merkley and O’Rourke are revving up for a White House run in 2020.
Merriam-Webster has named ‘justice’ its Word of the Year for 2018…after it saw a 74% leap in look-ups compared with 2017.
The Seattle Seahawks cooled off all that talk about what a dangerous team they’ll be in the playoffs with yesterday’s loss to the lowly San Francisco 49ers. Seattle set a franchise record with 148 yards in penalties and lost in overtime to a team they should have blown out, ending a four-game winning streak. The Seahawks have two games left, against Kansas City and Arizona, and a win would clinch a playoff spot.
New on Netflix: the movie made from “Springsteen on Broadway.”
“The Simpsons”–riddled with Portland references–premiered on this date in 1989, with the “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” episode. That’s the one where the family is broke because Marge spent all her savings getting Bart’s tattoo removed, and Mr. Burns canceled the Christmas bonuses at the nuclear plant, so Homer and Bart went to the dog track and gambled their last dollar on a hunch, on “Santa’s Little Helper.” But that sad pup came in last and was cruelly abandoned in the parking lot by his owner. So the Simpsons took him in, and he was the family Christmas present and everyone was happy.
Happy birthday to the airplane! It was on this day that supersmart 30-somethings Wilbur and Orville Wright flew what the Smithsonian describes as “the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard.” They launched their spruce craft with its 12 HP gasoline engine four times that day on a North Carolina beach, taking turns lying on their stomach in the middle of the bottom wing. Their longest flight that day was 852 feet, but it landed roughly, and then a gust of wind turned their contraption into sticks and they never flew it again. But it’s in the air now–hanging at the Smithsonian.
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This morning in our Coffee Cup full o’ Good News…we have the story of a dog who somehow got stuck on a roof, so the fire department came–and the pup rewarded the rescuer with a sweet little smooch….there’s also the story of a school bus driver who was doing his morning route when an ice storm hit…so he pulled over and bought Egg McMuffins for every single kid. There’s the story of a woman who became a crossing guard, and loves it, and the community loves her for her act of kindness…and the true tale of a wild turkey who started chasing a kid around, and the driver who pulled over and rescued from the child before he could dash into traffic. Click on the links, first thing in the comment section!
And with that…off we go into the wild blue I-205. See you on the radio!
Portland's Daily Drip 