A storm will bring heavy rain across parts of Washington state and Oregon beginning on Thursday night, a rare event for the areas during the summer dry season.
National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists are anticipating several inches of rain to fall over the course of the next few days, which could be more than a month’s worth of rain for cities like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
Why It Matters
The forecast comes as meteorologists have warned that climate change has contributed to the prevalence of 100-year and 1,000-year floods across the U.S. in recent years. As the atmosphere warms, it gains the ability to hold more moisture, which in turn can fuel heavy rains when storms roll into the area.
Such rains have brought devastating flash floods to many parts of the U.S. this summer, including Texas, Wisconsin, and Tennessee.
Windy.com
What to Know
On Thursday afternoon, NWS Seattle issued a hydrologic outlook for western Washington that warned of the incoming rain.
“A frontal system will move across the area Friday into Saturday across western Washington. Through Saturday afternoon, 3-5 inches of rain are expected across the mountains, with 0.5-1.5 inches expected through the lowlands,” the outlook said.
Animated weather footage from windy.com showed that through Saturday evening, some parts of Washington could see around 3.5 inches of rain.
Some rainy weather has already started near Vancouver, British Columbia, as of 5 p.m. Eastern time, the maps showed.
Rain is expected to begin as soon as Thursday evening, AccuWeather reported.
Much of the region is undergoing some level of drought, which could contribute to the flood potential from the incoming storm.
“Very dry antecedent conditions has left the area soils dry and hard. This amount of rainfall in one storm will not have much time to soak into the very dry soil, which will result in heavy surface runoff,” the hydrologic outlook said. “Impacts are uncertain due to how much moisture will be able to be absorbed by the soil.”
What People Are Saying
AccuWeather senior meteorologist Heather Zehr told Newsweek: “The biggest concern we have, because it has been dry, is that, especially in the higher terrain where there’s going to be more rainfall, that it can lead to some flooding issues. We are looking for rain totals in some of those higher areas at 2 to 4 inches, and that can lead to … some flooding issues and flash flooding issues.”
NWS Portland in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “The rain will ebb and flow, so expect some periods that are heavier rain, then lighter rain, it may totally stop and then start up again. The rain will move eastward out of the region by Saturday/Sunday at midnight.”
What Happens Next
Rain could begin to fall as soon as Thursday night, but the brunt of the storm will hit on Friday and Saturday. NWS Portland urged people to make sure their gutters were clean and that people should be aware that some creeks and streams might run higher than normal after the rainfall.
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