Author Topic: Record snow in southern Oregon  (Read 1475 times)

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Offline weatherforyou

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Record snow in southern Oregon
« on: December 21, 2012, 01:12:42 PM »
Grants Pass, OR, received 3.1 inches of snow, shattering the old record of half an inch set in 1965.

Nearly 14,000 people are still without power in Grants Pass and surrounding areas.  A 33 mile stretch of Interstate 5 north of Grants Pass was closed for six hours Thursday due to snow, accidents and downed trees.


Joe Torsitano


Offline SlowModem

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Re: Record snow in southern Oregon
« Reply #1 on: December 21, 2012, 02:21:18 PM »
From the sound of your post, this is unusual?  What is the average snow there and when do you get it?
Greg Whitehead
Ten Mile, TN USA

Offline weatherforyou

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Re: Record snow in southern Oregon
« Reply #2 on: December 21, 2012, 04:33:03 PM »
Our seasonal average is 4.5 inches, 0.9 inches in December.  January is the high month with an average of 2.2 inches.  In the seven years I've been here I haven't seen more than an inch at a time, probably three inches over a whole season.
Joe Torsitano


Offline Scalphunter

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Re: Record snow in southern Oregon
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2012, 02:12:31 AM »
Sounds like the utilities build and cheap grid and don't keep it cleared out if you loss power in that area with 3.5 inches of snow.

John


Offline 4wd

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Re: Record snow in southern Oregon
« Reply #4 on: December 22, 2012, 03:44:57 AM »
It looks rather wet and sticky which can cause problems with trees pulling down wires.

Offline d_l

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Re: Record snow in southern Oregon
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2012, 09:35:05 AM »
The local utilities should have a preventive tree trimming program to clear branches from around wires so that a mere 3.1 inches of wet snow doesn't cause these sort outages.  If that little snow caused outages here, the public would have the utility manager's heads on a platter.
--Dave--

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Offline Randall Kayfes

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Re: Record snow in southern Oregon
« Reply #6 on: December 22, 2012, 12:48:38 PM »
d_l it is never that simple.  Oregon is a mountainous tree filled state which receives massive amounts of water.  The water saturates soil making it very prone to landslides. They have very large stands of Douglas firs with interwoven roots. The Dougs on the edge are more prone to fall.  Powerlines come in leaving a line of weakened Dougs right in harms way. This is fine even with the snow but when it is followed by rain, the rain saturates the snow, weighing down the edge trees. I could go on but I think you get the idea.  Power companies in recent history have replaced lines with cable that looks like you could tow the Titanic with. I have personally observed these newer lines holding up extremely heavy snow ladden Dougs  All the line renovations cost allot of money the public has to pay for....



Offline d_l

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Re: Record snow in southern Oregon
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2012, 02:08:27 PM »
kayman, I was thinking the outages were more localized within the town than caused by downed high tension lines.  3.1 inches of record snow doesn't seem like it could cause what you described.  I know that Oregon has had a heavy rain this year and not as much snow based on the Snotel records.

The entire area of northern Nevada had a power outage some 20 years ago when the transmission lines near the Oregon border became laden with frozen mud from a combined snowstorm-ice storm-dust storm.  Some lines broke.
--Dave--

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Offline Randall Kayfes

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Re: Record snow in southern Oregon
« Reply #8 on: December 22, 2012, 06:16:34 PM »
d_l We are on the same page as I was talking about local lines as well. As a side note I have not observed dirtier electricity than here in AZ.  Oregon electricity was fabulous compared to here.