Pabuk still packed a punch when the sputtering typhoon blasted into the West Coast, soaking Oregon and Washington with record rainfall and howling winds.
Thousands of electricity customers were without power late Sunday night as a line of storms that began hitting the Northwest Friday blew through the region.
Portland General Electric reported that as of 10 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, about 18,000 customers were still without power in North Portland, Gresham, Canby, Cornelius and Silverton. PGE crews were working to restore power to areas hit by the storm. Since the storm began, crews have restored power to more than 90,000 customers. Most outages are caused by wind and rain-related damage, especially from falling tree limbs or trees.
About 8,000 customers were affected as of 5:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 30, with small outages throughout PGE’s service area. Larger concentrations of outages were in Gresham, Damascus and Canby.
Since the storm hit on Friday, PGE has restored lost power to nearly 110,000 people.
The storm also left record rainfall in its wake, making the month the wettest September in the Rose City’s history. Downtown Portland has received more than 6.21 inches of rainfall in September, smashing the old record of 5.52 inches set in 1927, according to records dating back to 1871.
Steve Pierce, president of the Oregon chapter of the American Meteorological Society, says “simply amazing” rainfall totals poured through the region this weekend.
The typhoon that was swirling off Japan’s east coast pushed a plume of rain and wind our way, making this weekend wet and wild.
“This is fairly significant by September standards and would be something we would expect to see later in the fall or winter months,” Pierce says
