On today’s date: Northwest winter storms train

On By Littum

A newspaper clipping from The Oregonian on November 23, 1921, days after the winter storm hit the Columbia Gorge. The map shows areas where trains were stranded by the storm.

(Historic Oregon Newspapers (oregonnews.uoregon.edu))

This segment originally appeared in today’s edition of the Morning Brief newsletter. Register here to get weekday updates from The Weather Channel and our meteorologists.

Winter storms are not exclusively a mountain phenomenon in the West. Those that happen in the lower elevations of the Pacific Northwest can cause travel chaos in areas that typically don’t pick up nearly as much snow.

On November 19, 1921, 103 years ago today, a major storm hammered Oregon and Washington’s Columbia River Gorge with up to 4.5 feet of snow and the city of Portland with accumulating ice.

Avalanches along the Columbia River Expressway were reported to be 4 to 6 feet deep. But one of the most conspicuous effects of the storm was the nine trains that were trapped for several days in the Columbia Gorge.

And it took amazing efforts to keep passengers and crew both warm and fed on a stranded train east of Portland.

Following The Oregoniana three-quarter length pipe was laid by the Bridal Veil Lumber Company to supply the steam train’s boilers with enough water to heat the cabin.

The conductor of the train wandered to the only shop in the area to buy as much food for his passengers as was then distributed by the crew.

And if that wasn’t enough, one of the lumber company’s employees provided a gramophone for entertainment. As long as the train was still stuck, “there was almost continuous dancing”.

Snow and ice storms are typical in the Columbia Gorge and Oregon’s Willamette Valley, despite their lower elevation and proximity to milder Pacific air.

It occurs when cold air from the Interior Northwest or Canada flows west through the canyon and valley and is trapped in place as a wet Pacific storm moves in.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has covered national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him Blue sky, X (formerly Twitter), Thread and Facebook.