It’s been a soaker the past couple of days! Some hefty rain totals as shown on this map.

You can see how effective the mountains are in this pattern at ringing out available moisture with 8 to 10 inches falling in parts of the Coast and Cascade ranges.

Focusing on the mid Willamette Valley, it appears as though the biggest flooding issues were a few closed streets, some flooded parking lots, and a lot of field flooding outside of town. No major/widespread flooding here. Both the Luckiamute and Pudding rivers are still rising, and will peak this afternoon/evening. Here’s a forecast for the Pudding River by the time it reaches Aurora.

Flooding has been more serious out along the coast, in the Coast Range, and up in western Washington where the flooding has been much more severe.

Forecast

If you want drier weather, then you are in luck. Counting today, we have two mostly dry days followed by two completely dry (albeit foggy) days. A four day stretch of mostly dry weather. Seems deserved doesn’t it?

Today and Thursday: Mostly cloudy and mostly dry. Slight chance for a few light showers, especially overnight into early Thursday morning. Very warm for this time of year as we continue to be on the warm side of the jet stream. Highs near 60 today and Thursday.

FRI & SAT: Dry, but fog is very likely along with afternoon clouds each day. Highs closer to 50°.

SUN: Periods of light rain. Still very warm with a high of 55°.

Next week

Next week looks really wet again. At the moment I see three more significant storms with showers during the in-between times. The first storm comes in on Monday, another one Wednesday, and a third arrives for Thursday & Friday. The third storm looks “juicy” with lots of moisture to work with, and since we have saturated soils, plus rivers running higher than normal, we could be looking at another flooding scenario. Too far out to know details, but keep this in mind.

Disaster preparedness

Hey, if you’re not already, use this week to make sure you have the essentials you need to survive if we have a major storm or disruption to our supply chains. For the vast majority of us, this rainstorm did not cause any serious issues, but that might not be the case next time, and why wait to rush to the store for basic essentials when a storm is on our doorstep?

Finally, I see some hope for our mountain snowpack and ski resorts. Wednesday’s storm might end up being a big mountain snow producer as we finally dip to the colder side of the jet stream. Not sure if the snow will last or not, but it’s a good sign as our mountains are way behind in snowpack for the moment.

I’ll have plenty more details on next week’s storms in a few days. For now, time to take it easy, and I leave you with these high water photos taken around the Salem area Tuesday.

We are several days into what has been a pretty dry stretch of weather, but there are clear signals this will be changing soon. At least some rain is expected every single day for at least the next eight days beginning Thursday (the 4th). Some days the rain will be light and spotty, and other days (especially next Tuesday and Wednesday) the rain will be heavier, steadier, and more widespread. Details below:

Details

The short version is that we have a very mild, but wet pattern coming up. No mountain snow whatsoever for ski resorts with this type of pattern. Maybe some snow briefly Thursday before temperatures warm up. Lots of highs in the 50s and lows struggling to dip into the 40s.

We have seen similar setups before. If the rain is spread out enough over a long enough period of time then we typically avoid any sort of flooding issues. If it falls heavy enough for a long enough period of time then we see flooding. Pretty straight forward.

What about flooding?

Right now my thoughts are tomorrow (Thursday) through Monday will be regular western Oregon rainy days. Nothing too wild. If you find yourself outdoors then you will need to plan accordingly. Tuesday through Thursday of next week hold the potential to be more impactful. Still too early to know how much rain will fall, but it’s becoming increasingly likely this time frame will feature heavier rainfall which could lead to some sort of flooding issues. Continue reading for more details. 🙂

Currently I don’t see a threat for major flooding for two reasons: the very low water levels in our reservoirs, plus the lack of any meaningful snowpack. If we do see flooding next week it’s more likely to occur along the coast and Coast Range. Any flooding in the valley would be at a more localized/smaller scale – think Pudding River, the Luckiamute River, and maybe some of the local creeks around town, and again, nothing major. I plan to have a fresh update Friday with more details.

November 2025

The month is all wrapped up and honestly, there’s very little to say about it. November 2025 was damp with the majority of days experiencing at least a little bit of rain, but with very few big rainstorms or heavy rain events. The result? A drier than normal November.

As far as temperatures are concerned, well it was a mild month. Salem had 19 days with above normal highs! These two graphs depict our temperature situation from the month very well. Our coldest highs occurred of foggy days that never really cleared out. Otherwise, no big cold spells this past month to speak of.

Take care and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Good evening! We cover a lot in this post. Here’s a super short “table of contents” for you:

1. October 2025 temperature and precipitation stats.
2. Highlights from October.
3. Our extended forecast.

October 2025

October 2025 brought to an end a string of 6 months with warmer than average temperatures. We ended pretty darn close to average, but officially 1.1 degrees below normal. This image shows how high temperatures panned out for the month.

A lot of slightly cooler than average days, but nothing super wild. This next graph shows the same data, but does a good job of showing just how close to normal many of those cool days were.

That graph does an excellent job at showing just how dramatically our temperatures drop in October. I like it!

Zooming out to see the big picture, we can see how this October was really warm across much of the country with the west coast and a small corner of the southeast being the exceptions.

This next image shows precipitation per day for Salem for the month of October. In the bottom right corner you will find the total for the month and percentage of normal. Remember you can always click on images for a larger view.

Highlights from the month

October 2025 goes down as a mostly uneventful month. Our coldest low occurred on the 30th with a temperature of 34°. The most interesting weather events took place on the 25th when we saw widespread wind gusts above 40mph (45 in Salem), lightning & thunder, and heavy rain showers. The coastline experienced high surf as well. Nearly a foot of snow fell at the ski resorts the following day.

Our forecast

Mon: Showers in the morning turning into a steady rain during the afternoon. A chilly high of only 53° with around a half an inch or rain. A great day for warm layers and a rain jacket!

Tue: Lots of mid/high level clouds with a few peaks of sunshine. Mainly dry. High of 57°.

Wed – Fri: Frequent periods of rain and breezy too. Wind gusts 30 – 40mph Wednesday and again late Thursday afternoon and evening. Over an inch of rain spread over the course of these three days. Potential for some heavier downpours and maybe another thunderstorm or two Wednesday afternoon.

Sat & Sun: We might finally have a dry weekend (both days)! I mean today was great, but the very first weekend in October is the last time we have seen a totally dry Saturday/Sunday combo. Highs in the upper 50s. Rain appears to make a return next Monday or Tuesday.

Have great first week of November!!

What an exciting and wild weekend of stormy weather we just had! Numerous thunderstorms popped up Saturday up and down the coastline, and even the valley got in on the action too! A strong line of storms dropped heavy rain, brought gusty winds, and put down multiple lightning strikes Saturday afternoon across much of the mid valley region. I’m borrowing this image from Fox 12 Weather (the best Portland weather team), and it shows really well the vast amount of lightning strikes that occurred Saturday.

For the most part, I’m pleased with how the forecast went: winds were widespread with Salem officially recording a 45mph gust, many of us experienced intense downpours, and thunderstorms were frequent along the coast making for a very stormy fall-like weekend. Rainfall totals ended on the lighter side, but I imagine not too many people noticed that… Below is a map with three day rain totals from Friday through early this morning.

We have two more shots at seeing rainfall over the next seven days, and I’ve listed both of them out for you below:

1. Tuesday night – early Wednesday morning a few hours of steady rainfall during the middle of the night. So unless you’re on night shift or you’re running packages for Amazon in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, you probably won’t even notice this rain event. The daylight hours on Wednesday look dry.
2. Saturday. This will be a bigger soaking. Rain begins at some point Saturday morning and continues through the duration of the day. No strong winds or wild thunderstorms this go around, just plain ol’ Oregon rain. Probably looking at a solid half inch. High of 62°.

I think many of you will appreciate the timing of our rainfall with the majority of this week’s rain taking place at night – a far cry from the rain these past few days.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will all stay basically dry during the “regular” daytime hours this week. Fog is likely during the mornings of our dry days, especially with all the ground moisture, longer nights, and cool airmass near the surface. So our dry days might not feature as much sunshine as the dry days we saw last week – something to keep in mind. Highs in the upper 50s to near 60°.

The Cascades

Finally, no snow in the Cascade passes this week. The brief rain events we do have on tap are bringing in warmer air, so snow levels will climb well above the passes. Bare and/or wet roads can be expected up there through at least Sunday.

Have an excellent and safe rest of your week! 🙂

Headlines

• Dry and partly sunny through Saturday evening.
• Rain arrives Saturday night.
• Showers, downpours, sunbreaks, and breezy winds Sunday.
• Dry Mon – Wed. Highs 62 – 65°.
• Much stormier weather arrives Thursday and will last through next weekend and beyond.

Details

Fall around here seems to have two stages.  The first stage is what we’ve been experiencing for over a month now: brief periods of rainy weather and showers followed by several days of nice sunny weather. As you know, that’s exactly what has taken place since mid September. In fact, dry days have just barely doubled the amount of rainy days since mid September – a pretty great mix if you ask me! 🙂

The second stage of fall takes place when those numbers switch with wet, soggy, and grey days dominating our region. Typically, this takes place during the second half of October or early November, and this year it appears to be right on schedule.

I’ve shared a few of those ensemble charts I enjoy using from time to time. The two charts we have today are showing 24 hour rainfall totals, and max wind gust speeds in mph for Salem. More than 4 or 5 days out it’s best to focus on general trends and large scale patterns, and not so much on the details yet… Remember, time goes from left to right and each horizontal line is a possible outcome.

Often what will happen is the extreme solutions shown by individual members (horizontal lines) will fade as time gets closer; however, if we continue to see an increasing amount of members showing a certain outcome then we do want to pay attention to that possible outcome as consensus grows.

When viewing both those charts I saw two clear messages.  The first one is that stage two is coming for western Oregon next week.  Regular rainy weather with frequent storms will dominate our weather beginning next Thursday, and it looks to stay active for as far as the eye can see. I drew a nice line right around Thursday morning to illustrate the solid agreement rain will begin on that day. Notice how wet it gets in the days following as highlighted by the arrows. The heaviest rain totals are indicated by yellow, orange, and red coloring.

The second thing I notice is these storms have the potential to be quite active/strong. In addition to the heavy rain potential, there is also a potential for very strong winds. The max wind speed chart has it’s share of impressive wind gusts as well with orange, red, and brown shadings representing much stronger than usual wind speeds. Here it is again. Remember to click on it for a closer look.

The weather models definitely have my attention, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for any strong frontal systems, “atmospheric rivers”, or powerful low pressure systems that might be heading our direction. Regardless, stay safe out there and enjoy what could be the last of the 60s for the season next week, because stormy weather is quickly approaching!