Scott Swanson
Lightning struck near a local school and buildings flooded Thursday, Sept. 6, as a rare late-summer thunderstorm parked itself over Sweet Home and dumped nearly 3 inches of rain.
It made for an exciting – if not frightening – second or third day of school for local students.
“It was quite a day,” said Supt. Don Schrader, who was at Holley School when the thunder and lightning started.
The storm hit in full force just before school let out, around 2:30 p.m., flooding some streets where drains couldn’t handle the downpour, and knocking out electricity to nearly all of the community about 2:45 p.m.
Andy Bryant, a hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Portland, said the storm was caused by an area of low pressure that had been hanging off the coast earlier in the week and “finally got some force to get it to move across the Northwest.”
In doing so, he said, it picked up moisture from the ocean and, thanks to an unstable atmosphere caused by differing temperatures in the atmospheric layers, triggered “a lot of thunderstorms.
“Heavy rain sometimes will stall over certain areas,” Bryant said. “Unfortunately, you guys were in the area when things stalled out.”
Bryant said a NWS spotter in Scio reported 2¾ inches of rain in a six-hour period.
“That is a lot of rain in a short amount of time,” Bryant said. “That would be a lot of rain in December. It’s very rare for this time of year.”
The Portland area got 1 to 2 inches, though the state of Washington, between Centralia and Olympia, also got some downpours similar to Sweet Home’s.
Lightning struck a Douglas fir tree behind Oak Heights School, scattering debris, some of which struck new Principal Courtney Murphy’s car, parked next to the school.
At Holley, Schrader said, “lightning bolts were hitting all over the place” when the storm hit at 2:30 p.m., though, he said, the actual school campus did not sustain any strikes. “The building was shaking. Then the lights went out. Kids were scared.”
Staff got students on the buses by 2:45, which was close to normal quitting time.
Schrader said Oak Heights staff reported the strikes near their school and held children until their parents came to pick them up.
“They didn’t let the kids walk home,” he said. “They got it done fairly quickly. It was pretty good – a great job for a principal new to Sweet Home.”
Meanwhile, water was running into classrooms under a breezeway at Sweet Home High School and the same thing was happening at Sweet Home Junior High, as drains backed up.
“(Facilities Director) Dave (Goetz) was running all over the place,” Schrader said. “They had Shop Vacs going and while they were doing that, the power went out.”
Buses left most schools on time, though Sweet Home High School students had to wait until about 3:50 to leave, he said.
Sports practices were cancelled, as was a volleyball match against Central scheduled for Thursday evening. A dance at the junior high was also scratched.
At the junior high, Principal Colleen Henry said the lights went out “two minutes before the bell rang.”
“We got the bullhorn out, the teachers had flashlights and cellphones. We just made sure everybody exited safely.”
She said students and staff handled it “well” and the timing, right before school was to let out, was fortuitous.
“The office staff was so efficient about making sure people were where they needed to be. It happened at a perfect time.”
Schrader said he wasn’t aware of issues at other schools.
“The kids were excited,” he said.
An oak tree in a yard at 661 Oak Terrace, the one-time dentist’s office at the top of the hill, lost a large branch, which fell on the roof of the home, now owned by Naslund Roberts.
Roberts, whose dentist father once practiced in the residence, said that it appeared that the home had escaped serious damage – that only five or six rafters had been cracked.
The branch was removed by Woodchuck Tree Trimming Saturday. Roberts said the probable cause was a crack in the joint and the weight of the rainwater.
Pat Wood, public works supervisor for the City of Sweet Home, said that storm drains at at 22nd Avenue and Long Street, and at Tamarack Street and 22nd, were reported to be flooding.
“We only got two calls,” he said. “There was just too much water for those drains. It’s more water than the area can handle.”
Another trouble spot is the corner of 13th Avenue and Main Street, next to Sweet Home Liquor, he said.
“The problem at the liquor store is there is simply so much pavement and drainage area, and when so much water comes in, it is more than can get out of the pipe. The answer is to get under the state highway and enlarge that pipe down to 9th Avenue and Ames Creek, but I don’t see that happening for the next 20 years.”
He said another trouble spot in the winter is often the intersection of 38th Avenue and Long Street, but the ground was so dry there that when Wood drove by, it was flowing easily because the ground was taking in some of the rainfall.
The biggest problem, Wood said, was his own maintenance office on 24th Avenue, where water flowed into the building, which stands lower than some surrounding surfaces.
“We’ve been shampooing the carpets all day to get it all out,” said Public Works Secretary Leann John.
Like at the high school, staff had Shop Vacs running to keep the water from coming in, Wood said.
Power was out from about 3:17 p.m. to 5 p.m. in most of the area, said Pacific Power spokesman Tom Gauntt. He said 7,100 customers in the Sweet Home community were out of power, which he attributed to a problem with a Bonneville Power Association line that serves Sweet Home.
Power in Lebanon stayed on, though portions of Albany, Halsey and Brownsville were cut off, he said.
Consumer Power customers also lost electricity for the same reason – a BPA failure – in the Sweet Home area, the company said in a tweet on its website. Power was restored by 5:45 p.m. Thursday, CPI reported.