Good morning, seekers of the elusive Daily Drip! It’s Wednesday, October 30, 2019. Portland’s weather promises to be sunny, breezy, dry as beef jerky, and much colder than a late-October day ought to be around here, all because we’re under an arctic air mass from Canada that spilled over the Cascades Monday night. Lemme check the 0400 temps…Portland 36, Vancouver 27, Hillsboro 25.. hope you have a seat warmer, because that’ll put a “brrr” under your saddle! We’ll eventuate up to a high of 50. Sunrise 7:47 AM, sunset 6:00 PM.
At least the winds have died down in the valleys west of the Cascades. They’re still pounding the Gorge, but the NWS dropped the wind advisory for Portland and surrounding towns as of 1 AM. Power issue? Not really. Crews stayed on top of things (and on top of their cherry pickers) yesterday. PGE has only 32 customers out…Clark Public has none…Pacific power has a handful downstate…
A nuisance wind like this is really good for pointing out loose fence boards that wake you up by slamming in the night…or driving wind chimes to madness…or providing a bouncy ride home in an airplane. Glad I tightened down a couple of deck gates that love to swing wide and then crack against the frames. Any weird experiences in the breeze?
California’s burning. We’ll learn more as the sun comes up, but with major fires up and down the state, things could take a dangerous turn with the arrival of a major Santa Ana wind event, potentially spreading the state’s wildfires even farther and wider. And my wife is driving today from Bakersfield to Portland. Good thoughts to everyone down there!
Oregon has a handful of fires too…the North Fork Fire, 16 miles east of Molalla, is at 65 acres, and the Detroit Dam Fire, five miles west of Detroit, is at an estimated 50 acres.
A Portland Streetcar slipped off its rails on SW 5th in the PSU area, blocking traffic as well as MAX. All OK now.
A day after Greg Walden gave notice that he’s leaving, there’s already a battle for Oregon’s sagebrush seat in Congress. State Sen. Cliff Bentz of Ontario announced his candidacy yesterday, while recent Republican gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler tweeted that he’s considering it. He came within six points of unseating Kate Brown last fall.
One lost….two found: Skamania County search and rescue crews gave it their very best, but will no longer actively search for a 78-year-old Beaverton man who disappeared while mushroom hunting eleven days ago. But police quickly located 10-year-old boy who ran away from a Gresham school, and was last seen at a Plaid Pantry. And an Aloha woman has turned up alive and fine, a week after she disappeared–by her own accord, it turns out.
We’ll learn more tonight at Gladstone City Hall, but there may soon be a bike-pedestrian bridge over the Clackamas River between Gladstone and Oregon City. It’d go where a century-old Union Pacific bridge collapsed into the raging river five years ago.
World Series! Despite a mind-bogglingly bad runners-interference call, the Washington Nationals prevailed to force a Game 7 in Houston tonight. Great Series!
When the truth is found….to be a septuagenarian….Grace Slick is 70 today.
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Let’s see what kind of Good News links we have in the Coffee Cup today!
–“Woman’s breast cancer detected by thermal imaging camera at tourist attraction”
–“Airbnb hosts are offering free housing to thousands of California wildfire evacuees”
–“This cat brings her neighbors flowers from her yard every day”
–“A little bird gets frozen to a metal fence…and a kindly person comes along..”.
–“Need to Escape Reality? This Dr. Seuss Exhibit Takes You to Another World”
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We’re driving to work in a murky darkness these days….and here’s why: it seems weird, but the sunrise times this week are the latest of the year, as late as the last days of December. That’s because we’re in the waning days of Daylight Time, which artificially pushes sunrise and sunset times later. After we snap back to Standard Time this weekend, the sun will rise before 7…and that grows later by two minutes a day until around Christmas, when sunup will occur a little before 8 AM, just as it does this week.
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