News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The Sisters' weather station recorded 23.18 inches of precipitation in 1996. This was 162 percent of the long-term average and was the wettest year since climatic data was taken at the Forest Service Ranger District in 1961.
Madras, located in the normally semi-arid Agency Plains of Jefferson County, was the station with the highest percentage of total precipitation in Oregon during 1996. That station recorded 21.12 inches. Modest as it was, that amount represented 209 percent of normal annual precipitation in Madras.
The year was a wet one at most of Central Oregon's tourist and recreational centers. The precipitation totals at two of the region's largest resort communities, Black Butte Ranch and Sunriver, were 47.69 inches and 28.99 inches, respectively -- amounts that in normal years would be comparable to several Willamette Valley stations.
In 1996 Oregon's driest weather station was Burns Junction, a lonely outpost that is located on a sagebrush-studded plain in western Malheur County, 46 miles west of Jordan Valley. Here the total 1996 precipitation was 8.52 inches. By way of comparison, that 8.52 inches was less than what had been measured last year in Eugene or in downtown Portland in any one of the months of January, February, November or December.
The 8.52 inches was also 195.60 inches short of the 204.12 inches that swamped the rain gauge at the Laurel Mountain (Polk County) station.
Furthermore, in one 24-hour period, November 18-19 last year, the Elk River Hatchery near Port Orford recorded over three inches more moisture than what was measured at Burns Junction in all of 1996.
Still, Burns Junction's paltry precipitation was 100 percent of normal. No station in Oregon had less than the normal annual precipitation.
Winter residents at Sunriver had to contend with a total 1996 snowfall of 99.2 inches. At Black Butte Ranch, 92.50 inches of snow were measured in the months of January and December alone.
Bend's official 1996 precipitation was 16.08 inches, about four inches over the long-term average of 12 inches. This 16.08 inches was far below the record precipitation of 25.75 inches in 1907, a year when Bend was blitzed by a prodigious 84.5 inches of snow.
The 1996 precipitation total ranked only 11th in terms of wettest years in Bend. However, that 16.08 inches may be misleading. For most of its weather station history, the Bend weather station has been situated in the downtown area, specifically opposite Drake Park next to the Deschutes River.
In 1987, the weather station location was moved eastward to the City of Bend Public Works offices, near the southern base of Pilot Butte, Bend's well-known volcanic landmark. This new site, as evidenced by the predominance of the hardy, drought-tolerate juniper trees, is in a drier location than the Drake Park area where ponderosa pines are part of the landscape.
By chance, Phil Brogan, Jr. (son of the late Phil Brogan, author, long-term journalist and weather observer for over half a century), using the rain gauge that his father had used at the same site of Bend's earlier weather station, has been recording precipitation data since 1987 -- the year the station was moved "across town."
Phil Brogan, Jr. said that in 1996 he measured 22.38 inches of precipitation (6.30 inches more than that noted at the new official site east of town). This would rank second wettest year in Bend's climate history which dates back to 1901. Furthermore, in the two months November and December 1996, Phil measured a whopping 13.45 inches of precipitation, an amount that alone exceeds Bend's normal annual precipitation.
The December 1996 precipitation at the Brogan residence was 7.49 inches, an amount that was second only to the greatest monthly total ever recorded in Bend (the 8.84 inches that soaked Bend in December 1964 -- the month of the so-called "100 year flood").
The 1996 precipitation totals confirm the fact that residents living in the "pine belt" on the Bend's west side, at Sunriver or at Black Butte Ranch invariably experience more frequent and greater snowfalls than do residents who live in the juniper country east of Bend or in the Redmond area.
Raymond R. Hatton is the author of "Bend Country Weather and Climate," "Sisters' Country Weather and Climate," and other books.
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