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08/19/08

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Oregon Coast Braces for Second Weather Attack

Newport saw the brunt of a large lightning storm Sunday night.

(Oregon Coast) - Coastal residents have been doing plenty of complaining about the dreary, overcast weather this summer season, and this week has given them even more to grumble about.

Major lightning storms battered the coast on Sunday night, which included rumblings of thunder all day prior to the big display. Now, another weather system is making its way into the coastline, carrying gusts up to 50 mph in some areas.

"It's been a foggy, overcast summer," said Danielle Emerick, manager of Starfish Point in Newport.

Newport saw some of the biggest brunt of Sunday night's lightning storm. The rolling thunder of the daytime turned to big, hazy flashes behind a wall of thick fog in Depoe Bay, about 9 p.m.

Things on the central coast will look a little more like this blustery shot from 2005.

BeachConnection.net staff watched and heard some of it from an oceanfront restaurant in town. Then the system drifted off to the south, to the Newport area.

" I was coming over Cape Foulweather, towards Newport, and enormous flashes just popped into view once I got a little over the hill," said BeachConnection.net editor Andre’ Hagestedt. "By the time I got into town, it was directly overhead in some areas. It was loud and frightening, but still pretty cool."

Newport's jetty gets battered by large waves as a stormfront moves in.

One Newport resident, who simply goes by the name Christine, watched some of the display from a bar in Newport later in the evening. Often, gargantuan thunderclaps could be heard over the din of the loud karaoke scene of the bar. "There was one huge, bright flash where the sound was right away," Christine said. "There wasn’t any delay. It was right overhead."

BeachConnection.net staff went to the Yaquina Bay area to attempt to snag some digital video of the phenomenon. “First we shot a bit under the bridge, because of the danger of goofing around a high vantage point with a metal tripod,” Hagestedt said. “The whole thing seemed to be dying down, so we only got one good clip of a flash that lit up the bay and the bridge itself. We eventually felt safe to move out into the open.”

Oceanside on a day of big surf and heavy winds

After a half hour of not-so-exciting footage, Hagestedt and others went back to where they were staying at the northern end of town.

“It was circling around,” Christine said of the storm system. “It showed up again in the north.”

Power flickered on and off in Depoe Bay and Newport throughout the evening.

BeachConnection.net staff saw the lights of businesses along 101 go out and then come back on several times, sometimes staying out for a few minutes.

Seaside in a storm (photo Seaside Aquarium)

The Oregonian is reporting more than one thousand strikes off the Oregon coast Sunday night, but the storm in the Newport areas was gone by 3 a.m.

“We never get that here,” Christine said. “This was rare.”

Christine and her boyfriend, Robert Thornton, comprise the Newport band Cat Fight. They were performing in the 100-degree heat of Portland on Saturday night, only to witness the massive lightning show there after their set was finished.

“It was huge,” Thornton said. “There were all these bolts of lightning everywhere.”

Manzanita during a particularly windy, stormy day.

Now, the Oregon coast is in for more, as the National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a special weather statement for a big rain and windstorm for Tuesday and Wednesday. The NWS called it an “unseasonably strong weather system.”

Gale warnings are in effect, and gusts up to 50 mph will hit the Oregon coast, probably beginning Tuesday afternoon. “The storm is remarkably similar to winter type systems and will produce strong winds,” said the NWS.

The strongest winds are expected Tuesday night on the coast, with the headlands seeing the higher gusts. Coastal cities may see only 30 mph gusts. That is considered light for any storm by coastal residents, but even tourists from the valley won't be disturbed by it.

Newport's Yaquina Bay was lit up rather spectacularly on Sunday night by lightning.

The coast range will see heavier precipitation, perhaps one to two inches of rainfall.

Hagestedt reported encountering a brief storm between Yachats and Newport on Saturday night, which blew lots of debris around the highway. He estimated winds were around 30 mph at that time. That storm was inexplicably gone by the time he got just north of Waldport.

In Seaside, Donna Weiss, of Weiss’ Paradise Suites, complained about one small storm that knocked the heavy blanket of flowers she has on her motel. She wasn’t looking forward to this new one. “We always get one little storm every summer here that knocks things around,” she said.

Video of Sunday's electrical storm in Newport

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