For this news story we need to travel to Manzanita, Oregon--located just above Nehalem Bay State Park, 14 miles south of our beloved Cannon Beach, and a solid hour and 45 minutes away from good ol' Portland, Oregon.
The tornado dropped down at about 8:20 Friday morning, causing damage to the beach and downtown area. Thankfully no one was reported injured, but power lines were knocked down and many were without power through the morning. Tornado warnings were given to northwest Oregon and southwest Washington.
There are many different types of tornadoes and in Oregon we mostly see the waterspout funnels that form over water and accumulate with the heavy cumulonimbus clouds and weather along with it. They are not the super-cell tornadoes we hear about in America's southern region, or any of the ones we have seen in the stormy tornado disaster movies that I will probably be going to watch today. Being far enough from the coast like I am here in Portland does not mean we are not affected or safe from tornadoes and their warnings.
Oregon is not known for it's tornadoes, mostly because they range from 0-3 on the Fujita scale (or the F-scale) which rates the tornado on it's intensity and the damage it does on the human structures and environment it passes through. Including the one on Friday, it will be the second tornado of the year in the Tillamook County. Overall there have been 106 tornadoes in all of Oregon from 1957-2015, most of them being zeros on the F-scale because no damage was done and no one was hurt. The most fatal tornado occurred on April 5, 1972 starting on the Portland's water edge of the Columbia River and later crossed it to Washington stopping close to Lacamas Lake. It killed 6 people and injured 300 because of the massively populated area it landed in.
If a tornado were to pass through your city would you know what to do? This would be a good time to brush up on your tornado preparedness, and I would suggest this article by the weather channel here. Please be safe and prepared out there!
Also if you find yourself stuck inside a twister in your house and your dog, stay away from the windows and wear comfortable shoes (that's a Wizard of Oz reference if you don't get it...)
Sources:
Tornado History Project. 2015. Tornadoes in Oregon. http://www.tornadohistoryproject.com/tornado/Orego...
Dubois, S. & Bellisle, M. 2016. Tornado strikes Oregon beach town of Manzanita. USA TODAY. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/10/...
