What not to do. #portlandflooding pic.twitter.com/J4ztxVRHmT
— Chelsea Rutherford (@PDXphotogGal) December 7, 2015
FLOODMAGEDDON 2015: I knew yesterday’s morning bike commute was miserable, but had no sense of the sweep the pounding rains would have. Portland got walloped with a record 3.32 inches of rain over the course of 24 hours. The zoo closed down, so did a bunch of roads, which had become impromptu ponds, or were choked with debris, or had turned into massive pits. In Milwaukie, people needed to be rescued by raft.
The really fun part? Forecasters say the torrential rains have only just begun. Plan on more poop geysers, Portland! Need sandbags? Check here.
Planning on avoiding drowning your car by hopping a bus? Let’s hope police caught the only TriMet bus driver (allegedly) driving his route drunk.
Commissioner Amanda Fritz and her family will receive $1.45 million from the state, in a settlement stemming from the death of Fritz’s husband, Dr. Steven Fritz, in a car crash on I-5 last year. That settlement is separate from a lawsuit Fritz filed in the case.
The national champion Portland Timbers arrived back at home yesterday, and were greeted by hundreds of screaming fans. There’s a parade in the works at noon, and, if current forecasts hold, it will probably be rained on. Portland!
A minimum wage bill being worked up in advance of next year’s legislative session would carve the state into three parts, each of which would have a different wage: Portland, the Willamette Valley, and everywhere else. Will it be enough to placate activists who say the entire state should make at least $15? Doubtful.
You know how when presidential primaries are heating up every four years, we all call them “circuses”? We’ve been wrong every other time but this one. Because this time a major party’s leading candidate is seriously calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country, and it is the worst and scariest circus of all time.
Donald Trump is overreacting , in part, to news that one of the San Bernardino shooters was an immigrant from Pakistan. The other was born here. And federal authorities now believe they’d been quietly radicalized for a long time before the attack.
By the way, Trump’s proposal is being received terribly by most of the world, which of course still doesn’t mean he won’t be the Republican nominee. The Huffington Post is promising to highlight his bigotry in every story it writes about the campaign.
Other ugly Islamophobia: Someone throwing a pig’s head at a mosque in Philly.
In gun control news: Sure, congress is under the thrall of the gun lobby, but at least the Supreme Court’s shooting down challenges to the protections we have in place.
It turns out the Chicago police officers who wrote reports after the shooting of Laquan McDonald were straight up lying. Awful.
The forecast? You already know.
All the articles about ‘record rainfall’ seem to compare only to other December days. Is there an all-time record for the most rain in a day? We can’t be even close, can we?