50 years later, Columbus Day Windstorm still ranks as greatest
Friday marks the 50-year anniversary of the single most devastating storm to strike the Pacific Northwest in the 20th Century.
Aptly dubbed the "Columbus Day Storm", the storm struck with great fury on Oct. 12, 1962, pummeling many areas with well over 100 mph wind gusts and causing catastrophic damage -- mainly across Oregon, but Washington wasn't necessarily left off the hook. 47 people were killed and 317 were hurt.
According to weather researcher Wolf Read, the storm caused between $230-280 million in damage (in 1962 dollars) across California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, making it the worst natural disaster to strike the U.S. in that year. Read says the storm felled 11.2 billion "board feet" of timber and, for example, damaged 70 percent of all homes that resided in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
The storm formed from the remnants of typhoon Freda and re-energized off the California coast into a super storm -- its exact path of development something that had never been recorded before in Northwest climatological history, Read said. Some of the peak wind gusts were over 145 mph at Cape Blanco, Ore., 138 at Newport, 127 at Corvallis, 116 in Portland and 96 in Astoria -- that's not only hurricane strength, but up to Category 3 strength.
Even the Puget Sound area had some amazing gusts. Although Sea-Tac Airport had a paltry 58 mph peak gust (since topped by the 1993 Inauguration Day storm, and again by the Hanukkah Eve Storm of 2006 (68 mph)), Renton reported a gust of 100, Bellingham had 98, Oak Harbor had 90 and Everett had 81 mph.
"Comparisons of peak gusts, where they can be had, tend to put the Big Blow [what he named the storm] at the top," Read wrote in his excellent research of the storm. "But such figures are abstract, and often don't reveal the very reasons why those who lived through the Columbus Day Storm remember it so vividly. The sudden violence of the wind compelled many people to take cover in their homes or basements, a lasting memory, and the sheer magnitude of destruction, in literally all categories of accounting, puts this storm far above any other."
While other wind storms have had stronger storm centers, such as the Nov. 1981 and Dec. 1995 storms, this one stands alone in how it formed -- something Read says it could be another 100-1,000 years before we see a storm like it in our future.
"The storm ruined my birthday!"
Speaking of vivid memories, there are plenty of stories to be told from those who lived through the epic event:
"I was 5 1/2 and in Kindergarten, I remember like it was yesterday," said Teresa Schomber who was in Snoqualmie, Wash. "My dad worked in the woods. The big impact item was my dad picked us up at school (we were town kids and walked) and the fact that DAD picked us up was a never happen. The wind was so strong that he carried each kid to the car one at a time because the wind was making us fly... and it was raining so hard."
She added that the school buses that picked up for Snoqualmie Falls School had men with chainsaws on them and they had to cut trees off the roads to get the kids home.
"I was 17 and in fact it was my birthday," said Shelly Weickum, who was in Burien, Wash. "My parents and sisters took me out to eat. I've never seen wind like that before or since. The wind actually picked up rocks in the street and tossed them. Windows were bowing in and out."
"I was 9 years old, in Longview," says Gretchen Loschen. "I had just gotten glasses for myopia the day before. I remember standing at the window, watching and being enchanted by the fact that I could SEE it, while my mom kept yelling...get away from that window!"
"Pacific Avenue in downtown Tacoma was completely covered with broken glass from all the blown out windows," said Barbara Cobean. "The tallest building at that time was Schonfields Furniture Store and I don't think there was a window left. At one time we passed a traffic light that was laying on the street and it was still cycling."
"I was 11 and my dad had a charter fishing boat moored in Seattle," says Nan Whitehead. "I went with him to secure the lines, and the dock was lifting and slamming down with each wave. There were boats that had already sunk."
"I remember the neighbors window breaking out and he and my dad carried a piece of plywood over to cover the open window, when a gust came up and knocked the neighbor down and my dad still had hold of the board," said Don Hoyt. "The wind picked my dad up off the ground and carried him several feet before he was able to let go, the board went flying and my dad went tumbling like a tumble weed."
Marcia Staunton was working at the federal reserve bank in Portland and said her Dad had to come and pick her up during the storm.
"Dad drove across Broadway Bridge during height of the storm," she said. "Coming home, we came passed Sears windows and saw blown-out (mannequins) striped from windows and clothes blowing around."
And then there was little Christi Baker, who it could be excused if she grew up having disdain for Mother Nature:
"It was my 4th birthday... no one came to my party!!" she said. "I was not a happy little girl."
Wind forces rare evacuation
Among the many tidbits from the storm Read uncovered is the raw notes from the weather observers in Corvallis, Oregon who had to flee the station during the storm. As the winds increased, the observers missed the 3 p.m. observation. Then at 4 p.m., the report showed a wind of 60 knots (69 mph) gusting to 85 knots (98 mph) with a peak gust that hour of 110 knots (127 mph).
15 minutes later, the report notes "ABANDONED STATION". The next day, this notation: "Unreported from 0400-1200 due to power failure and instruments demolished." Read notes that it's the only time in the history of the Pacific Northwest a supervised weather station had to be abandoned due to high winds.
Read said the observers later noted the winds increased further in the 15 minutes as they were leaving, so the 127 mph reading may not have been Corvallis' peak gust.
Video of the storm in progress
Melvin P. Miller managed to get some silent 8mm footage of the storm as it passed through Albany, Ore.:
A relative posted the video on YouTube and says the reel had the hand-written title "Typhoon in Oregon Oct. '62".
And here is another video tour -- this one from McMinnville, Oregon taken by the Fulham family:
How would today's models have fared in forecasting the storm?
UW Atmospheric Sciences professor Cliff Mass made a great presentation Thursday night at the University of Washington commemorating the 50-year anniversary of the storm. One of his topics was to highlight research by the UW's Rick Steed on taking today's modern forecast model and to see how it would have done in predicting the storm in 1962.
The Columbus Day Storm was poorly forecast by the forecast models of the time -- the forecast for the 12th on the 11th called for just scattered showers and had the storm much weaker and going into southern Oregon.
In fact, here are some pictures from the Seattle Times Mass presented, showing the forecasts from Oct. 11:
It was some critical observations by Weather Bureau forecasters in Seattle and Portland (many who were UW alums!) that picked up on some data that the storm was developing to give people at least a several hour lead time the storm was approaching.
Steed went back and gathered the atmospheric data the day before and plugged it into the current forecast model of today. Would it have seen it coming?
No.
It too had the storm much too weak, although it did get the track OK.
Here is a bit from the presentation:
Mass did say the reason a modern model would have failed is that there was not enough data at the time to accurately feed a forecast model. But had a similar storm formed today, Mass was very confident that current models would see it coming.
As I mentioned, Read, who was also at the presentation Thursday presenting his research, has done an excellent write up on the storm at climate.washington.edu. In fact, he's written up just about every wind storm to strike the Northwest. It's a great research site, and find more at climate.washington.edu/stormking
Peak Gusts from the Columbus Day Storm
Here is a list of peak gusts as compiled by Read, sourced from the National Climatic Data Center:
- Newport, Ore: 138 mph
- Corvalis, Ore: 127 mph
- Portland (Morrison Bridge): 116 mph
- Troutdale, Ore: 106 mph
- Portland (PDX Airport): 104 mph** -- official estimate. Power failure prevented actual reading (last 88 mph as power failed)
- Renton, Wash.: 100 mph
- Bellingham, Wash.: 98 mph
- Astoria, Ore: 96 mph
- Vancouver, Wash.: 92 mph
- Salem, Ore: 90 mph
- Tacoma (McChord AFB): 88 mph
- Eugene, Ore: 86 mph
- North Bend, Ore: 81 mph
- Everett, Wash: 81 mph
- Hoquiam, Wash.: 81 mph
- Olympia: 78 mph
- Seattle (Sand Point): 66 mph
- Medford, Ore: 58 mph
- Seattle (Sea-Tac Airport): 58 mph
I remember this storm very well.  I was just 2 years out of high school and  living in an apartment in West Seattle at California Ave. and Othello street.  I was young and alone in my apartment with no electricity.  I used a flashlight to see my way around.  During the storm a huge tree came down in front of the entrance to the apartments.  I was blocked from leaving my apartment  until someone came the next day and used a chain saw to cut my way through.
Missed this one, we moved her in 1966.  Glad to see KOMO at least linked to a side article (a blog no less, hope he got some comp.)  Funny how people round the states don't realize how temperate the climate is here in Western Washington, but it can get nasty...  Two years ago I was riding my motorcycle in Walla Walla when a freak tornado hit a field along Hwy 12.  I was really pretty nervous and starting to bug out as this thing was moving for the highway but everyone else was slowing down to a crawl to watch it....  I'm like wtf people!
It was my 4th birthday and our family of 7 was living in a summer home on the beach of Dash Point.  As my family ate my  fried chicken birthday dinner, we watched the dark ominous clouds coming in over the Puget Sound.  When the lights went out, all five of us kids crawled into our parents bed, scared to death and waited the storm out.  Looking back, it is amazing that nothing happened to us that night.  Our little cottage was surrounded by old growth fir and cedar trees. Â
I was 12 and living in Parkland when this storm hit. One thing I remember was watching our home barometer fall faster and lower that I had ever seen it, then stepping outside in the late afternoon, looking south and seeing this ominous dark, leaden sky. There had been wind earlier but at that moment it was eerily silent.
The next day I went to Mt. View Memorial Park where my Dad worked to help with the clean up. To this day you can see the many poplars on the south east side of the property and how they differ greatly in height.. The taller ones are the survivors of that storm.Â
I was living in the Greenwood area; a 5th grader at Greenwood Elementary school. Earlier that evening around 7:00 or so there was a fender bender outside our home -minor excitement compared to the storm that blew in a little later in the evening. I don't think I slept a wink that night; the noises were so frightening! The next morning I took a walk through the neighborhood and was amazed at the amount of broken branches and downed powerlines littering the streets.
This was my first experience with a major windstorm, and it put quite a fear in me. Now I live on the coast just a couple of miles inland from the Pacific near Forks. We frequently have windstorms in the fall and winter, but they are still unnerving and leave a knot in my gut thanks to that Columbus Day storm 50 years ago.
 @Asher'sGrams Yup, we must be just about the same age as I believe I was also in the fifth grade living in the Wallingford-Green Lake area. I don't remember much of the storm itself but like you, I remember the next morning being shocked at the amount of branches and junk being on the ground ...lots of roof shingles and siding off of houses, etc. That sticks in my mind like it was yesterday.
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Along with that childhood memory was the 1965 earthquake. I was walking to school and remember the telephone poles waving around in the air and the concrete I was walking on cracking a bit ...for a few seconds, I thought it would be the end of the world. That also is a vivid memory that sticks in my mind.
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I was in the Army stationed in Puerto Rico when this happened - and there was nothing on the local news...although I didn't know that much Spanish and all the news channels were Spanish language. Actually, the only English news was on Radio Moscow...which came in handy during the Cuban Crisis...<G>
I remember the Columbus Day Storm very well. I was at a teen time dance at Jason Lee Junior High. Trying to cross Sprague street was a disaster, I didn't have to walk across the street, the wind blew me and trying to hold on to one of the poles outside the school. Never forgot that storm.
The beginning of global warming I bet, yes?
The new 520 floating bridge is designed for 78 mph winds not the 100 mph wind of this storm. This is why we in Washington have lost so many bridges to storms, poor planning. (The Narrows Bridge, The Hood canal bridge, the I90 floating bridge)
 @Jim McGraw Director of tollrunner.org I believe the new bridge will be resistant to winds up to 89 MPH but I understand your point. I don't believe the winds on Lake Washington during the 1962 storm were anywhere close to 100 MPH (I want to say in the high 60s to low 70s from what I read somewhere) but I do remember that they claimed there was a tornado reported on the lake near Juanita?
 @mandy h  @Jim McGraw Director of tollrunner.org The reported gust
in Renton were 100mph, Bellingham reported gust that were 98mph, Oak Harbor
90mph, MacCord AFB reported 88mph----The list goes on from there.
The highest gust in Washington were reported by the Naselle radar site near
the mouth of the Columbia River with gust of 160 mph.
 @pete1427 ...ah, understood. And I agree. I guess my comments made it sound as if I was resigned to accept the 89 mph figure as making sense as I was trying to justify it in my own mind. Especially since I mentioned the possibility of the cost factor in making the new bridge resistant to higher winds than 89 mph would outweigh the probability of such high winds ever occurring again within the lifetime of the span itself.
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I think we're all on the same page now. Thanks for the interesting banter. You are very well informed and I appreciate your comments!Â
 @mandy h
Sorry, I am not trying to argue either.
I think one would find that like the older 747-100s, and
747-200s that were designed with a maximum take off weight of about
750,000lb, but in fact were overloaded at well over 1,000,000lb when
they were used to evacuate Vietnam, there is a built in fudge factor
involved in these wind ratings.
It is a common practice of many good engineers to design well beyond
the expected parameters of operations and thus they design machinery
and structures that will exceed the stated design limits.
 @pete1427 Again, Pete, I'm not trying to dispute anything you're saying and I'm not quite sure why you're disputing what I'm saying. I too was around for all those events you've mentioned (and that is really great information you're providing), with the exception of the completion of the original Mercer Island Floating Bridge in 1940. I'm not sure if you're older than I am but many of us still call it the "Mercer Island Floating Bridge" as it wasn't until 1967 that it was renamed the Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge.
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Again, all I'm saying is that there must have been a reason that the engineers designed the new SR-520 bridge to withstand winds of 89 mph instead of 110 mph or 160 mph. I guess what I was implying is that the engineers used 89 mph for the new 520 bridge because winds in that particular area of Lake Washington have never come close to exceeding that speed since records have been kept, even during the 1962 storm. Perhaps they had to weigh the probability of winds exceeding 89 mph against the cost of designing it to withstand wind speeds of 150 mph. Is it worth spending several million more (just guessing at that figure) to possibly over-engineer the bridge for an event that most likely will never happen for the next hundred years or so?    That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying that is impossible for a wind gust of over 100 mph to come along and wipe out the new 520 bridge once it's built. I'm just saying that the designers who are a lot smarter than I am have determined that 89 mph is good enough. That's just my guess.
 @mandy h The old floating was completed in 1940. I doubt
that the bridge had any established maximum wind rating. When the
newer parallel bridge was built well after the 1962 storm and hazards
wind were taken into consideration as the state had issues because
the Hood Canal bridge had sunk in 1979 because of high winds.
The Evergreen Point opened for traffic in 1963 and was still in the
early construction phases during the Columbus Day storm.
That lead to a redesign of the Hoods Canal bridge and played a
significant roll in the 1989 design of the Homer M. Hadley I-90 bridge
(the third floating bridge that parallels the I-90 Lacy Murrow Memorial
bridge)
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The old floating bridge had sections that sunk, but that was not
because of winds. It was because contractors were high pressure
washing debris into the air floatation chambers and there was also a
significant amount of water that entered the floatation chambers
because of heavy rainfall. The bridge had been closed to allow
for the maintenance work to be completed.
The pumps had been shut off and the chambers filled with water to
the point that they were no longer able to maintain buoyancy.Â
----------OOPS.
 @pete1427 Well, it's no use arguing with me. I didn't set the wind limits on the new bridge at 89 mph and I have no idea why they came up with such a seemingly odd speed. I mean, why 89 and not 90 mph? Somebody that has much more expertise than I have came up with that figure. Do I agree that it should have been designed to withstand 100 mph + winds? ...sure. All I am saying is that somebody determined that 89 mph was good enough.
 @mandy h Renton is located at the south end of Lake Washington
and the gust were from the south and south-west so it becomes obvious
that the Lacy-Murrow bridge was hit by gust higher than the design
perameters.  With the winds coming from the south, the Evergreen
Point would have had some protection from the surface winds given
the older floating bridge.
 @pete1427 Sand Point 66mph ...I was referring specifically to Lake Washington. The inference being that somebody while designing the new bridge must have consulted with experts that told them to design the bridge to withstand winds of 89 mph. That's the only reason I can come up with.
I was 29 years old and married with three small children, the youngest being just six months old. Our house on South Hill in Puyallup took a terrible beating because it was still under construction. The roof had not yet been secured at the edges and the wind just picked it up and put it in the side yard. We were terrified and of course had to have the roof replaced immediately -- this time properly secured to the house. Awful!!!
I was 12 years old and lived in Purdy at the time. I don't think I will ever forget that night! I remember being dropped off by the school bus and walking up our long, tree lined driveway with the trees swaying like crazy! My brother and I grabbed our blankets from our upstairs bedrooms and we all "camped" out in front of the fireplace. Somewhere I have slides that my folks took of all the damage. I remember it being very frightening!
I was four at the time. I can remember looking out my bedroom window in Federal Way and witnessing a huge fir tree in the neighbor's yard crashing down...fortunately falling BETWEEN the houses behind us!
I remember this storm vividly. I was eleven at the time. We lived in a suburb of Vancouver Washington in a smaller home. My neighbors had cleared three acres several years before. I was all planted grass. By morning the entire three acres was littered with tress that surrounded their property all the way to the back porch. It was astounding to see trees tossed around like that.
We had a huge tree directly behind our house. During the peak of the storm that tree snapped off about two feet from the base and landed on the roof of the home. I remember seeing the branches rip through the plaster. That caused our phone line to come down while I was talking with my mother in Portland. I thought I was going to die when that tree hit the home. We got out of the house, afraid it was going to collapse, and stayed at the neighbors the rest of the evening.
By morning, when we could see the damage to the home, that tree covered the entire roof of the house. You could not see the shingles through the branches. The only thing that saved the house from being distroyed was the fact the tree was so close to the house when it broke. Had it been ten feet further back it would have crushed the home. Our yard looked like a battle zone of trees blown from the woods. There was no way you could walk across it.
GREATEST? Â It looked pretty terrible to me. Â Perhaps a small edit: Â WORST?Â
It was a dramatic event for my family living up in Stanwood and although I was only 5 IÂ can remember the dramatic evening news announcement saying a big storm was developing and advising households to stock up on candles,batteries and stay in the middle of the house away from the windows. Shortly after this announcement our power went out and all hell broke loose. Living in the Skagit flats we felt the brunt of the storm as the wind roared and our old farmhouse creaked and groaned under the onslaught. of hurricane force winds.Mostly I remember us all standing in the front hallway with a kerosene lantern until my Dad deemed it safe to escort us up to bed.Our power was out for days and when I went outside to play the next morning I found our yard full of downed branches and every single TV antennae in our neighborhood was either bent over or completely gone from every roof..
The folk in the mid west and south east are saying "big wup" you got nothin on us, we live with twisters and hurricane's EVERY year. That said, I hope to never have to use my generator for a long term outage!
I remember reading that this was the strongest non-tropical storm to make landfall in the lower 48 in the 20th century. The Great Blizzard of '78 Feb 5 - 7 (Philly to Boston) was the second strongest non-tropical storm.
I was at the presentation last night, good stuff. Looking forward to the storms of the fall and winter season coming up, sick of the sun...so booooring.
I was a jr in high school & when our school bus driver saw live power lines down he said he wasn't going any further. All us kids had to get off the bus, walk through downed and live wires to get home, which for me was over a mile away. We were scared to death & it took well over 3 hrs to get home.Â
@Wishing1 - As you may've seen, Wishing1, I am looking for someone who experienced the storm. Would you be interested in being a small part of my story tonight at 5pm? Call me ASAP 206-795-9973.
I was a senior at Lake Washington High School and lived in Juanita (now part of Kirkland) during
that storm. We had several old growth trees on our property and all of them survived. Many surrounding
properties had trees that were downed by the winds, and there were extensive power outages
through out the entire area. Most of the outages were fixed in a timely manor, unlike the 1983
Thanksgiving Day Storm where some homes were without power for a week or more.
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The Thanksgiving Day Storm of 1983 winds were not as high as the Columbus Day Storm
of 1962, but because of the population continuing shift to the suburbs many more homes were without
power than earlier storm because of trees falling across the power lines.
 @pete1427 I wonder if those trees that fell were Madrona. Every time I've driven along Lk Washington I've thought they looked like they could snap so easily. Just curious & wondering why the Madrona trees aren't trimmed back more or if they even need to be.
 @Wishing1 Most of the trees that caused electrical were evergreens, often
not the trees themselves,but branches that snapped and shorted out the lines.
At that time, there were very few Madrona trees in the Juanita area. There were
also diciduous trees that fell, but Madrona trees were not that common in the area.
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@pete1427 - Hi Pete, I'm a reporter for KOMO 4 News working on a story for this evening about the storm (BTW, I also went to Lake Washington High School but a few years after you). If needed, would you be available midday to discuss your memories living through the storm? Please email me at jeffburnside@komotv.com or post a note to me on my Facebook page as soon as possible,
 @Jeff Burnside, KOMO 4 News Investigative Reporter  @pete1427Â
I have E-Mailed contact info
well here is a link to all the big storms all the way back to 1880 http://www.climate.washington.edu/stormking/ it is a very interesting read
Being 1 year old at the time, I think I slept through it under protection from the Lord.
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My folks did not sleep.  They talked about it for years and it still has an impression upon them. We lost a great amount of timber, some old growth but none hit the house. They should have. Angels on station!
 @pbs7mm The lord huh?
 @MossMan  @pbs7mm Yup. Same one that keeps you every day.
I have a real problem with someone talking about his faith in one post, and then showing how ugly they really are in MOST of their other posts. You have nothing to that most people would want. You seem like an unhappy, bitter old man. What has God done in your life? Seriously, you are so one sided and pathetic, it gives God a bad name.Â