Nov 14 2008
Da rain
From what I can see on the City’s rain gages, SoPo got the bulk of the rain thie week. For example, the Harney gage down in Sellwood got a solid 1.32 inches yesterday but the Skyline School gage only got 0.61 – less than half. In contrast, the Hillsboro gage only has 1.19 inches over the past 72 hours, at least according to NOAA 0.69 for yesterday). Not quite the drenching I was hoping for.
Here is a map of the rainfall depths for the past 72-hours (as of yesterday morning). As you can see, the heaviest rains were to the east. I didn’t have time to track down more gages outside the city’s network. I should try to set that up some time in the future.
What’s this mean? Who really knows. The forecast for the rest of the week looks dry and possibly even a little sunny. 3 days is a decent amount of time to dry out but I doubt it’ll get any drier than a few inches down. Most soil in the area has a fair amount of clay which means it’ll stay wet until, say, next July. By the first couple races, my guess is that the course will be pretty chewed up.
Personally, I’m hoping for the mud from Hillsboro of last year as opposed to the stuff we had last weekend at PIR. I was able to motor through that looser, soupier stuff easier (relatively, of course). The stiffer mud that has a higher potential to kick your front tire around gives me trouble.