Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-13-25_THURSDAY_710AM

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Greg Roberts breaks down the weather and road conditions for the outdoor report.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Mr. Outdoors is here. Greg Roberts at RogueWeather.com. We're doing the outdoor report today because I'm going to take off tomorrow because we're going to take Linda to a nice Valentine's Day dinner and go to the Alexander Tutanoff, Dr. Brian Hall concert

down at the Performing Arts Center in Ashland and enjoy dueling pianos and all that sort of good stuff. And then Monday's President's Day, and I'm taking that off, and I'll be back on Tuesday. And so, Greg Roberts, happy enough and good enough to come in here and do it a little bit early. How are you doing, Greg? Welcome back. Good to have you on.

Well, I'm doing good, Bill. I'm doing busy. Excuse me. a little frog in the throat. And, you know, I guess our timing turned out really good because, boy, do we have major winter weather impact happening all over the region. Wow. And the thing all over the region, because I wasn't seeing much this morning other than I had severe wind at my house and the garbage cans were knocking over. But where's it happening? Basically, it will begin in northern Douglas County. Freezing rain has been reported from Sutherland North on I-5, there is freezing rain reported out in the drain Elkton areas in North, call it Northern Douglas County,

that is impacting travel on Highway 38 out to the coast to Highway 138 West from Sutherland to Elkton. And then you get up to the Willamette Valley, and when you look at a trip check map, they typically will show you by using orange and red where and that is due to a combination of freezing rain, which is causing significant icing and even some snow. And they are begging people, don't travel. Oh, boy. So they're just a mess. There's an excrement show this morning there in Portland. Okay. Yeah, I can see that now. I'm seeing all sorts of warnings there. And how are we doing in our particular pass-level areas, either the four passes north of Grants Pass and, of course, Siskiyou? How are we looking today?

The quad passes, we definitely, they are reporting spots of ice, not related to freezing rain, it would appear, but spots of ice at Canyon Creek, Canyon Mountain, south of Canyonville, and again at Roberts Mountain to the south of Roseburg. And then once you hit Sutherland, everything to the north from that, likely going to be seeing freezing rain, maybe even a little bit of snow. Highway 42 out to the coast at Camas Mountain, spots of ice. We have spots of ice reported on Highway 199. That is a Hayes Hill and Oregon Mountain situation. Spots of ice on the Applegate Highway 238 coming into Medford and Grants Pass, but by far the highest impact

that we're seeing right now. I-5 in the Siskiyou, snowing very hard, winter storm conditions existing, and chains are required on all vehicles on Siskiyou Summit. you will chain up to get over it. Then you get down into Northern California and the snow persists basically from Lake Shasta all the way north to the Oregon State Line. And there are severe winter storm conditions currently occurring around Mount Shasta and then down through the canyon that I-5 runs through, basically all the way down to Lakehead, as it looks like right now. Chains are going to be required on all vehicles on I-5 near Mount Shasta and all the way down to Lakehead. So that part of it wasn't as big a surprise. All right. But still, there are better days to be traveling I-5 south, right?

The impact at Siskiyou Summit, as severe as it's become this morning, that is definitely a surprise because while up to a foot of snow had been expected at, say, up at Mount Ashland at the ski area, really hadn't been a whole lot of discussion from either Medford National Weather Service or ODOT about potential major impacts at the pass level on I-5 at Siskiyou Summit, but we have it. All right. Hey, Greg, I wanted to ask you a question. And so we just know we got weather just outside of Ashland or outside of Medford and Grants Pass, essentially. A lot of weather impact going on, okay?

Yeah. What about, I wanted to talk about last week's storm. How different was the snow that fell during that time? Because I'm going to be talking with Ron from Medford 549C about the North Medford High Gym collapse, that roof collapse. And I'm kind of curious, what was the difference in weight between that snow, let's say, and how we would build roofs for typical snow? And I know Brad Bennington has said that most of the roofs have been specced lately to be able to take 20 pounds per square foot of weight, of snow snow load things like that what do you know i don't know if you do know but well i've got some idea on this i'll let ron speak to it directly

because you know that's that's his bailiwick for medford school district he knows um the roofs oh far better than i i can speak to the snow and the composition of it and what made it so heavy. It was barely snow. Water has a lot of weight to it. And so what was landing on that roof had basically about as much water content as you're going to get before it's going to become rain. And then as colder temperatures develop, that started turning into ice, which added exponentially to the weight factor per square foot per square inch on that roof. And I will also tell you this. I've had people say, well, if it didn't fail in the 2017 snow bomb, why did it fail now?

Because the 2017 snow bomb may have weakened it in ways that were not immediately obvious. collapse of the summit beverage structure down in Phoenix, which, again, a structure not nearly as strongly built as the North Medford High School gym. Yeah, and I would figure that, you know, especially repeated stresses over time, you know, you could have some, you have some internal fissures on beams and things that you don't necessarily notice. Everything looks okay afterwards. Exactly. Okay. You know, people just look at a roof and if, you know, portions of the notice everything looks it looks okay afterwards exactly okay people people just look at a roof and if you know portions of the roofing material like tiles and shingles if that doesn't look immediately obvious to them they don't think they've got a problem reality is you probably do have a problem you

really do need even though your roof may not have collapsed, and I'm talking more about commercial structures, especially with the weight of the snow added in that we just had, people damn well better be inspecting and really closely inspecting every single roof they've got, especially if it's over a public gathering place like the North Medford gym, because I truly believe the 2017 snow bomb set in motion things that manifested last week with the snow that we got. Yeah, and then, so it was weakened a bit. It'll be interesting.

Now, I know that they've had engineers on scene there trying to figure that out. So it's sort of like a forensic, you know, CSI, how did the roof come down, you know, kind of thing going on. And I'm telling you, don't be a bit surprised if they wind up analyzing these beams and finding out these things were actually cracking and beginning to fail because of the snow load back in the snow bomb in 2017. Yeah, how big of a snow bomb was that? Could you refresh my memory about that? January 2nd, 2017. How much did we get? What you got in Medford depended on where you are.

The airport itself had eight inches of snow. Out here, three blocks east of South Medford High School, I had 13. Oh, okay. All right. And now that wasn't as heavy of a snow as far as water content as what we got last week, though, right? Actually, no. That snow had quite a fair amount of water content to it, but the snow we got last week did have more. Okay. That's what I thought. Now, the freezing, and i'm just kind of jumping out like i said i haven't talked to ron yet about this but i'm thinking that um if you

were going to get it off the roof you were almost going to have to get it off the roof almost as fast as it was coming down or within reason you couldn't let it melt right because once it starts freezing it's going to be 2020 yeah everybody's the expert saying well this is what you should have done well no i mean just just but you people, we do wonder, though, you know, about that because there was a big deal to try to get the parking lots and the sidewalks rather cleared from what I was hearing from reports about that. But it seemed like the real-time bomb was up on the roof, really. And, you know, flat roofs, of course, are always more subject to this kind of stuff. You know, I had a lot of snow on my roof, but it just started melting and just came off. Things seemed fine.

You know, not hearing any cracks or creaks either. So that's good. Well, just because you're not hearing it doesn't mean it's not happening. Okay, now you're terrifying me. Thanks. All right. Well, honestly, I don't think this is as big a deal for residential structures, but commercial structures, the bigger the roof, the bigger the potential.

And if it's a flat roof at all with no peaking to help drain water off, I'm not sure exactly how many commercial structures, public gathering structures we got that fit that criteria. But there may be more damage than we think out there, really. But yeah, even if it didn't crack and come apart right now, like the North Medford High School gym, I guarantee you, you want to go through it with a fine-tooth comb, because I'm not going to be a bit surprised if we find out that a fair majority of these big commercial flat-roofed buildings in Medford actually do have some damage to them that they better get corrected before they wind up in a North Medford High School gym situation. And I'm sure that the engineers are going to be having a pretty busy time over the next few weeks here. Hey, Greg, now we'll set that aside here at the moment now, so we know we've got weather to the north and to the south of us here right now.

Right. But we're relatively okay. Is there anything worth doing outside? Could you do some good fishing this particular weekend? I know you're not doing any sportsman and outdoor show this weekend. Next weekend, of course, we'll be at the kdrv one news watch 12 that'll be great and yeah that'll be great fun and i call that playing my home court exactly exactly and where would you where would you go right now or is it just skiing or outdoor

or snowing kind of stuff or nothing else what would you say well we're going to have to see how this impacts mount ashland because we knew that higher exposed areas, Mount Ashland, Crater Lake, Rim, some of these places could see some really high winds. And Mount Ashland may see winds high enough to impact operations. And they're definitely, it is dumping snow up there. I am not seeing any current information from them immediately posted to the website. Looking at their lodge webcam, and thankfully right now, based on what I see, I don't see trees in motion. So that's a good sign. But it is definitely, it's snowing up there.

Oh, their snow stake webcam is down. That much I can tell you. They are reporting 23 degrees currently and wind at 13 miles an hour. So again, that's lodge level wind. That doesn't tell us what is going on up at the top of aerial all right now a couple of weeks from now we're going to be into march already from what the models and everything else that you are seeing right now are we looking for a pretty heavy duty in your opinion weather a winter weather pattern continuing you know how you talked about the miracle of march back in in drought era you know that kind of thing what do you you know what would you say

if you were to look in the into the rogueweather.com crystal ball um i i said it already um and i'm going to keep saying it's asking a reiteration then okay that's going to change my mind i wouldn't expect spring here in this part of the world until we get down at the very end of April, beginning of May. Until then, we look really winter-like. Really winter-like. All right. We're going to take that to the bank. And I know that you were very busy putting up the posts and the forecasts and the traffic and everything else that is going. Bottom line, though, if you could avoid going south on I-5 right now, you're better off for the time being, right? Oh, yeah, for sure.

I mean, snow levels are going to be going up. We know that. And especially come tomorrow, by the time we get to tomorrow afternoon, where the snow impact really should be is going to be two places, Siskiyou Summit and still potentially around I-5, because while right now the data says snow levels will get above I-5 level around Mount Shasta, I'm really beginning to have my doubts on that. But Saturday and Sunday, I do think it is far better looking that we'll have rain hitting all portions of I-5 between Ashland and Redding. But if you're going Highway 89, say you're trying to cut over and get to Reno,

Highway 89 through the weekend right now, I would bet there's going to be snow impact on Highway 89 at Snowman Summit between I-5 and McLeod, and then again on Dead Horse Summit in southeastern Siskiyou County, getting down into Shasta County. So yeah, there's going to continue to be snow impacts for areas like that in the Cascades, but I really do think that, you know, we hit Saturday and Sunday and we will see improvement for I-5 between Redding and Ashland. It's just right now, it's a complete mess. All right. Hey, Greg, thanks so much and have a good time. And we'll talk to you next week, some point, I'm sure. All right. Thanks again. Yeah, we'll probably have to revisit something

along the way on a day next week, but you and I will figure that one out. All right. I'll be in touch. Thanks again, Greg. Greg Roberts, RogueWeather.com. RogueWeather.com, you want to keep up with what he is doing. By the way, the outdoor report that we do that at least once a week, sometimes more, depending on what is going on. And that is sponsored by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive in Medford. 730. And I think Brad is standing by. We're going to talk a little bit about the roof. We know we have Ron from Medford 549C District. He's going to be talking about the collapse. A lot of people have been wondering about this. Will it

be rebuilt, etc., etc.? We'll kick that all around. It is Conspiracy Theory Thursday. We'll have time for your calls, too.