This is KGW news at Sunrise,
Homes destroyed a couple
million people without power and
more flooding is on the way.
Within the last couple of hours,
Ian became a tropical storm.
But it remains dangerous as Floridians
wake up this morning to assess the damage.
It is a Thursday morning here in the Sunrise
show. We have a lot to cover
when it comes to Hurricane Ian.
I know we're going to touch
on that here in just a moment,
but Raz, some local,
local weather headlines to
get to 1st. Did you guys
hear the rain? Last night,
did you get some briefly your place?
It smelled. Honestly,
it smelled like rain.
When I came out of my
house this morning.
I like it. I heard
it, man, and I laid there and
I was like I soaked it in.
Alright, here's what is going on right now.
We do have. I've circled in yellow up
in the northeastern Oregon and now
mainly starting to move up into the
corner of Washington over in Idaho.
But there's a pretty good round of
thunderstorms and there could be
some more thunderstorm development
for you folks a little bit later
today here on the West side.
Not much rain down in Salem.
A few light showers just north of you.
The biggest chunk of rain is this one,
which is just on the other
side of the Columbia.
And you can see much of Clark
County right now getting some light
to moderate rain pockets.
So good morning, battleground.
There you are.
We have the ongoing chance of
seeing some showers today,
but that big chunk that's in
Clark County right now,
once that moves off slowly in
the coming hour or so,
I think that's going to be most
of the rain we see.
The rest of the stuff looking
forward today would just be a few
scattered showers around the region.
We're at 62.
We'll be 65 at noon eventually
today we'll open up some sun.
Bikes, we'll get up to about 70.
And then once we get into the evening,
I think it's mainly dry.
And then just like that,
we're back to dry weather.
So far,
the airport's picked up right
about 2/10 of an inch of rain.
That's the most we've had since
the first week of July.
Brenda,
Rob, thank you. Well Hurricane Ian
has now weakened to a tropical storm,
but it is still powerful with 65 mile
an hour winds over the next few days,
life threatening flooding is a huge concern.
Florida has already seen almost
2 feet of rain. Downed power
lines are the other major threat.
They seem to be everywhere this
morning in areas hit hardest by Ian,
about 2,000,000 Floridians
are without power right now.
Another common scene.
Damage at airports.
Flights out of Jacksonville
international have been canceled today,
and it's not clear yet when
the airport will reopen.
Not everyone could evacuate.
And we're not just talking about people.
Would you look at that?
A group of flamingos at a Botanical
Garden in Saint Petersburg.
Staffers had to huddle them together
in that restroom to keep them safe.
And it worked,
the garden tweeting out that
everyone is a OK.
Meanwhile, volunteers from the
Portland area and other parts of
Oregon and southwest Washington have
already landed in Florida to help out,
and more are standing by.
KGW's Alma McCarty caught up with
some local Red Cross volunteers
who are ready to respond.
In North Portland, it's the calm before the
storm for Chris and Amber Schwartzkopf.
The couple packing light and standing
by found some converse waterproof shoes
this year that I'm going to take with me
to volunteer for the American Red Cross
preparing to go to Florida for the hurricane.
Ian that means getting on a plane,
flying to wherever they sent us.
We may be as far north as Georgia,
be in Georgia for two weeks.
We might be in South Florida for two weeks,
anywhere in between.
They're used to this, waiting to see
where the storm hits and leaving at a moments
notice to where they're needed
most after a natural disaster.
If they do update you every morning. What's
going on? What they're expecting.
Amber's volunteered for two years,
Chris for four, helping at shelters.
And with logistics,
we saw this one last week.
I told her, ohh,
this one's coming up and they had
every day pegged to come towards Florida.
So yeah, we were hoping we get to go.
Several Red Cross volunteers are
already on the ground assisting,
like Jackie Nicholas,
a volunteer from Sweet Home.
She flew out Tuesday.
You just go
in there for your as calm as
you can. Very positive. Just
put yourself in their shoes.
Has brought high winds and
flooding, knocking out power
to millions of customers.
It not only takes folks to restore power,
fixed infrastructure save lives,
it also takes folks setting up
those entire support systems to
hopefully get folks back on their
feet as quickly as possible.
The Oregon State Fire Marshall's
office sent 13 people from its
incident management team to assist.
You're lucky and fortunate that
we actually have some folks
that have done this before,
and this is not our first
deployment to support a hurricane.
And we've supported Katrina,
Sandy and Michael in the past.
For Amber and Chris, their past
experience has also prepared them
for what they might see and taught
them to appreciate. Living in Oregon
make you so much more grateful of the
types of weather that we just never see.
Again, that was Alma McCarty
reporting for us this morning.
If you'd like to make a donation
to the Red Cross to help with
Hurricane Ian relief efforts,
we have a link you can access
by pointing your phone camera
at that QR code on your screen.
You can also find that link by
going directly to kgw.com while
Hurricane Ian continues to destroy
parts of Florida, leaving entire
neighborhoods just in shambles.
This is video from Placidia right
on the West Coast of the state.
You can see roofs getting ripped off.
Of homes and debris flying through
the air and then just cluttering
the roadways. Alright, Rod,
we talked about our local
weather earlier this half hour,
but let's get into the
Hurricane Ian discussion right
now. So at this point the winds are
sustained at 65 mph. That's windy,
but you know that's that the headline
is really not any longer the wind,
it's how much rain and what are the flooding
issues going to be at this point looking
forward all the way up into the Carolinas.
So here is the latest imagery of the storm.
Again, once 155 mile per hour sustained now.
It's still a strong tropical storm at 65,
so hurricane definition is 74 mph and
this thing the Hurricane Center at
least acknowledges could restrengthen
to a category one storm.
So the center is roughly along the
coastline South of Daytona Beach
have had heavy rain in Orlando,
there's Daytona Beach and then
up here is Charleston.
So the path is going to take the storm,
it looks like up into South Carolina
again right now, 65 mile per hour winds,
here comes the track.
The Hurricane Center officially keeps
it as a tropical storm, but again,
they acknowledge it certainly.
Possible could be a cat one when it
reenters the coast of South Carolina
tomorrow and then heavy rains up
in the North Carolina going into
Friday night into Saturday morning.
They believe that this area up into
South Carolina and still parts of
the northern Florida at this point,
could still get forced as much
as 12 inches of rain.
That's river flooding, you know,
combined with just 12 inches of rain
causes flooding anywhere and everywhere,
all by itself, right?
So the futurecast kind of
rain bands with this here,
you can see it up in the child.
There's a center.
But what could be a category one storm,
10:30 tomorrow morning,
our time just outside of Charleston,
SC,
heavy rain up in the Norfolk and
then and then over the weekend it
continues to kind of break up and
shear apart and you get heavy,
you know rain areas all the way
up into the New York City area.
OK.
Locally we talked about
thunderstorms overnight out outside
of Pendleton up into Lewiston.
Those storms are have calmed down at the
time being no longer producing Thunder,
lightning.
But that threat could reemerge
you folks later today.
It's raining up in much
of Clark County right now.
Mr Cash shows that area is slowly
pushing off through 8:30 this
morning and then during the day.
This is mostly a few scattered light showers.
Here we are at 1:30,
so not a ton of rain and it's
one of those days.
Maybe you get a shower at your house,
maybe you don't.
The rain chance will be ending as we
get rolling into the evening hours.
We're at 62 in Portland,
60 degrees in Salem forecast numbers today,
pretty similar to yesterday.
This shows Salem, Mcminnville,
Corvallis with a light West wind in
the upper 60s and Portland Seven Day.
By the time we get into tomorrow morning,
it's fogged the sun and then
we're totally dry and
then we warm. Back up 85 Saturday,
Sunday models now take us all the way
into the 80s into Wednesday of next week.
By the way, roughly at the airport,
we've picked up about
2/10 of an inch of rain.
That's not bragging rights,
but something that we haven't
done in a long time. Back to you.
All right, Rod,
we're going to take a look at some of
our other local headlines right now.
We start with this story.
A 26 year old is facing murder
charges this morning for allegedly
shooting and killing his twin brother.
Portland police say March Ray Martin
fatally shot his brother, Martris.
Outside of a hotel on Northeast Sandy Blvd.
At about 3:30 Sunday morning,
US Marshals tracked down martray
and arrested him in Renton,
WA on Tuesday night.
In Vancouver, everyone 18 and under
will be able to ride Sea Tran buses
for free starting this Saturday.
You'll still need a free pass,
but kids can get those at sea Tran customer
service spots and through their schools.
The free fares are part of the
state's move ahead Washington program.
It's a $17 billion transportation
package approved by the legislature back
in March with the hope of increasing
transportation options around the state.
And Portland is getting more than
$1,000,000 in federal funds to
redevelop the city's Pride Plaza.
That's the area downtown around SW
Harvey Milk St and West Burnside
between 10th and 12th avenues.
The funds are coming from the
American rescue plan,
and the redevelopment project will
include construction of a new
park with the hope of revitalizing
that part of downtown.
And that's a look at some of
this morning's local headlines.
Well,
Oregon is set to become the first state in
the nation to try a new approach to Medicaid.
It'll get $1.1 billion in federal money
to address the root causes of poor health,
including homelessness,
food insecurity and medical care for kids.
Oregon is also approved to use
those Medicaid dollars to pay
for housing costs like rent.
The program even helps people affected
by the impact of climate change,
including extreme heat and wildfires.
Now, Medicaid can directly cover
air conditioners, air filters or
temporary shelter for medically
vulnerable people on OHP who are
facing harm from climate disruption.
Because of the pandemic, though,
Patrick Allen with the Oregon
Health Authority says most of these
programs won't start until 2024.
There are only two states
in the United States
that produce coffee commercially. I'll
give you a hint for the second one, Kona.
Kona, Arizona. I'm not playing a rhyming
game here, but we are playing a game
of coffee trivia. Today is National
Coffee Day, so go ahead and pour yourself
another cup and stay tuned for this
coffee day edition of Drew and you
right after we take this short break.