Portland just got hit by the craziest storm.  We had 40-mile-per-hour winds, torrential rain, thunder and lightning like I’ve never heard (something like two hundred strikes in the last couple of hours), and now it seems to have passed, as if to say, “Enh. . .I’m done with you now, Portland.”

Really weird.

I was supposed to have a gig tonight, but I decided to give it a miss because of the weather, and the traffic, and the fallen trees, and all of that.  If I thought we’d have had an audience, I’d have happily made the trip out there, but the newscasters were telling everyone to stay home, and I could imagine driving an hour out to the gig, only to be playing for an empty room.  Not worth it.

We had reports of a funnel cloud over the area that my gig was supposed to take place, but luckily the golf-ball-sized hail never did materialize.  I moved my car underneath a tree in my neighborhood to keep it safe, which seems to have been an unnecessary precaution, but we do still have plenty of thunderstorms on the way tonight.  A tornado was reported just off of the Oregon coast, near Lincoln City, which is pretty mind-boggling.  That NEVER happens.

Anyway.

I guess if you want a Portland weather report, you’ll have already been reading elsewhere, but I’m okay, and the power stayed on the whole time (unlike the homes of fifty thousand other people in the Portland area), so the worst is over.