Winter Storm — North Oregon Cascades Foothills, Oregon

2021-02-11 to 2021-02-13 · North Oregon Cascades Foothills, Oregon

Event narrative

Wide variety of impacts due to snow and ice, ranging from a crippling snow/ice event in the northern half, a crippling ice event in the Santiam Canyon, to minimal impacts in mostly plain rain for the extreme southern portion of the zone. There were reports of over 2 feet of snow just east of the zone boundary, even at elevations below 2500'. For example, a trained spotter in Detroit measured 26 inches overall, and there was a public report from Zigzag of 25 inches.

Wider weather episode

This was a major, widespread, multi-faceted winter storm that caused major problems across the northern 2/3 of our forecast area, even (and especially) in the lowlands. Impacts were felt as far south as Albany. WFO Portland measured 10.1 of snow, followed by roughly 0.75 of ice. Significant impacts to infrastructure occurred, with over 400,000 people losing power at some point during the storm. The area impacted the hardest appears to be the southern portions of the Portland metro, south through Oregon City and Silverton and as far south as Salem and Aumsville. Polk County was hit hard by ice as well, with 1.00 to 1.75 of ice reported. Some people in these areas hard-hit by ice lost power for over a week.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 946435. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.