Lightning splits the sky east of Northeast Portland's Rocky Butte about 9 p.m. Sunday. The thunderstorm started in Eugene and moved north to Portland where the setting sun painted the clouds red and created long, arcing rainbows.
This storm had it all: Towering clouds and powerful winds. Thick bulbs of rain and long veins of lightning. Red skies and rainbows.
And timing. Sunday was the start of national Lightning Awareness Week.
"It was a doozy," State Climatologist George Taylor said. "That's about as strong a thunderstorm as we get" in the Willamette Valley.
Balmy temperatures and unusual southerly winds, circling around a Pacific low-pressure zone, fed the storm. Warm, wet air climbed the Cascade foothills. Without the wind's usual eastward push, the mass circled back into a rare valley thunderstorm.
The storm gathered around 6:30 p.m. near Eugene and dropped a third of an inch of rain. As it marched up the valley, witnesses reported hail, two funnel clouds and winds topping 70 mph. That made it officially "severe."
In Portland, the setting sun shone past the storm's well-defined western wall to paint the clouds electric red and build huge rainbow frames for its lightning. Nightfall stole the storm's heat and power soon after it crossed the Columbia.
--Andy Dworkin/The Oregonian
Top Photo: NICK RAINS/The Oregonian, Bottom Photo: Luis Contreras
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