March 2026 Slice of Life, No. 3
It had been a slow, uneventful day. Just rain. Lots of rain.
At times it just poured straight down, like it was coming from a gigantic tub faucet. Visibility was significantly reduced. I could barely make out the neighbor’s arborvitae hedge.
As the storm raged, we chose to relax in our comfortable overstuffed chairs — Carl reading a book, me reading on the internet.
Then sometime between 5:00 to 5:30 pm, there was a loud roar. My first thought when I initially heard that roar was, There’s a low flying aircraft overhead. But then the rain began to beat sideways against our west-facing windows, and I quickly realized that the roar was the wind.
The wind gusted at 50 mph that evening, forming a giant vortex that passed right over us. Trees were crazily swaying. The tall, skinny arborvitae were oscillating, west to east, back to west, and every once in a while they looked like they were spinning. And more, much more, rain poured out of the heavens.
The long and short of it, we had been slammed by an atmospheric river.
Two neighboring counties were issued tornado warnings at the time. Around 60,000 customers lost power. And flooding and rock slides were reported in the Gorge.
For those who don’t know about our northwest weather, it is rare for us to get a thunder and lightning storm, much less a tornado. Rain? We gets lots of that, but it doesn’t usually drive sideways against our windows or pour in torrents.
We were so thankful the storm only delivered rain; snow and ice would have been devastating.
In my classroom
Are you wondering, What is an atmospheric river?
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