Photo courtesy: Steve Pierce
It was all part of 34 consecutive hours of winds gusting at 58 mph or greater there -- the minimum speed required for a High Wind Warning. The wind hit 61 mph at 10:36 p.m. Sunday and didn't drop below 58 until 9:07 a.m. Tuesday, although the gusts have occasionally gone back over 58 since.
But this was no hurricane or windstorm moving in -- the weather was clear!
Instead, the winds were caused by a massive pool of cold in Eastern Washington and Oregon -- temperatures in the bowl were stuck in the upper 20s to low 30s amid a dense fog.
(Read more about how that forms in Cliff Mass' weather blog)
With warm air aloft creating a big inversion, cold air gets trapped at the surface and can remain there for days, leaving areas along the eastern Gorge in a days-long fog.
But cold air is denser than warm air, and this it creates its own area of intense high pressure. Think of that area as a big, inflated balloon and the Columbia Gorge provides the channel at the bottom of the balloon for the air to rush out to relatively lower pressure over the Willamette Valley -- at the peak Monday, the difference in pressure between Portland and The Dalles was nearly 10 milibars ( or in inches of mercury: 30.54" in the Dalles and 30.27" in Portland.)
And with the topography of the gorge concentrating that air over a small area, the wind accelerates even more. The results, a natural wind tunnel the likes that would make Boeing jealous.
This weather pattern is fairly common in the winter and hurricane-force winds are not unheard of at Crown Point, but not sure I've seen reports over 100 mph before. Or at least, it's been a while.
Here are some others having fun(?) in the wind:
This last one is KATU-TV photographer Mike Warner trying to explain the winds out there. You thought hearing yourself at a Seahawks game was a challenge!