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Eugene rumbled mid-morning Wednesday as nine lightning strikes hit in 15 minutes, the latest in a wave of thunderstorms that has delivered more than 100 strikes across Lane County since Sunday.
This story was updated to include information about new fire starts.
A band of thunderstorms sweeping through Lane County has delivered 103 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes since Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
Thunder rattled downtown Eugene on Wednesday morning, when nine strikes were recorded in 15 minutes. The bursts likely mark the end of this week’s storms in the southern Willamette Valley as they move northeast.
Monday was the busiest day, with 91 lightning strikes, mostly along the Interstate 5 corridor. The Oregon Department of Forestry said the storms sparked at least five small fires, all of them quickly put out. Radar showed pockets of rain, with as much as an inch estimated between Creswell and Pleasant Hill toward Dorena Lake.
Officials warned that if the storms had produced more dry lightning — like Sunday’s strike that ignited the 7,400-acre Emigrant Fire — more blazes could have started. Outflow winds from thunderstorms can whip flames in unpredictable directions, and unstable conditions can drive fast growth.
Weather like that, conducive to fires, was still lingering Wednesday in east Lane County. The forestry department’s South Cascade District responded to six small fires, all under a quarter of an acre, alongside the Mohawk Valley Fire District and McKenzie Fire & Rescue.
The weather service’s tally didn’t include lightning that flashed between clouds without hitting the ground.
Combined estimates from the weather service and ODF put the total at about 400 strikes Monday and Tuesday, both lightning that hit the ground and lightning that flashed between clouds. Those figures count only what was picked up by the service’s network of sensors and infrared video.
