The December 2022 ice storm and windstorm

What happened

Cold air was still sitting in the lowlands after earlier snow when Pacific moisture arrived on December 22. It slid over the shallow cold layer and fell as freezing rain. The Seattle office collected ice reports of 0.1 to 0.4 inch from Bellingham through Seattle, Bellevue, Kitsap, Tacoma and Olympia, with half an inch at Lynden. Around Portland and Vancouver, ice ran a quarter to half an inch after a brief burst of snow, with up to half an inch near McMinnville and in the Coast Range.

East winds through the Columbia River Gorge on December 22 were extreme even for the Gorge: a station at Rooster Rock gusted to 99 mph and Corbett High School to 88 mph. Freezing rain returned to the central Gorge on the 26th, with about 0.7 inch measured near Underwood.

The second system was a strong front with south winds late on December 26 and through the 27th. Coastal stations gusted 60 to 80 mph, Santiam Pass reached 71 mph, a ridge station in the south Washington Cascades recorded 104 mph, and gusts of 40 to 55 mph spread across the north and central Willamette Valley and Clark County, peaking around midday on the 27th. East of the Cascades, the Walla Walla airport gusted to 76 mph.

The storm in NOAA’s numbers

NOAA’s Storm Events Database files this storm as 16 episodes from the National Weather Service offices in Medford (MFR), Pendleton (PDT), Portland (PQR) and Seattle (SEW), dated December 22–27, 2022. Counting the six tree-relevant report types (high wind, strong wind, thunderstorm wind, ice storm, winter storm and heavy snow), the episodes hold 67 reports: 32 high wind, 16 ice storm, 18 winter storm and 1 heavy snow (37 in Oregon; 30 in Washington). The highest gust among the wind reports is 90 knots (about 104 mph), measured, in NOAA’s South Washington Cascades forecast zone in Washington. Of the counted reports, 8 mention trees in the narrative.

A report is one entry per forecast zone or county per event, so one storm crossing many zones produces many reports. Gusts are in knots as NOAA records them (1 kt is about 1.15 mph).

Affected counties

50 counties have at least one counted report (30 in Oregon; 20 in Washington). The most reports touched Multnomah County, OR (9), Clackamas County, OR (8) and Hood River County, OR (7). Most wind, ice and snow reports are filed by forecast zone, and a zone report is assigned here to every county that zone covers, so a county’s number is the reports that touched it, not separate incidents.

Damage, deaths and injuries

NOAA’s property damage field for these episodes adds up to $7.1 million in nominal dollars, as entered by the NWS offices at the time and not adjusted for inflation. The event records list 4 deaths (4 direct, 0 indirect) and 2 injuries across these episodes. NOAA’s fatality file gives a location for each death it holds: “Vehicle/Towed Trailer” 4.

NOAA’s Portland office entered $7 million for the windstorm, including $3 million on the US 26 report, $2 million for the Portland metro and $1 million each for the central valley and the western Gorge, plus $100,000 for Clark County. The ice reports carry no dollar estimates. All 4 deaths and both injuries came from trees falling on vehicles, and NOAA’s fatality file codes their location as “Vehicle/Towed Trailer” rather than “Under Tree”.

What it meant for trees

The windstorm did most of the tree damage. NOAA describes many trees uprooted, snapped or stripped of limbs around Portland and the central valley, including several trees about 2 feet in diameter down in Garden Home. Portland General Electric and Pacific Power together had more than 100,000 customers out, and US 26, US 20 and OR 173 closed for downed trees in the Cascades.

Trees that carried ice on December 23 faced those gusts three days later. The Coast Range shows how fast iced crowns fail: near Deadwood a spotter reported half an inch of ice and numerous trees down before the wind even arrived.

What homeowners can learn from it

• Most of the deaths were on the road. A tree fell on a truck on US 26 in the Coast Range and killed three people, and another fell on a pickup near exit 40 on I-84 and killed one. When a high wind warning covers a forested highway, putting off the drive is the simplest protection.
• Inspect after the ice, before the next wind. A tree that lost limbs or split a fork in an ice storm is weaker for the next blow. Have large damaged trees near the house, drive or street looked at within days; see tree risk assessment.
• Photograph before anything is moved. Pictures of the tree, the stump or root plate and the damage are the evidence an insurer will want; storm damage and tree insurance in Oregon and storm damage and tree insurance in Washington explain what policies usually cover.
• If a tree is on the house, a car or a line, get people out of reach first. Then call the utility for anything touching wires; emergency tree service and fallen tree removal cover what happens next, and tree work safety explains why a crew should handle trees under tension.

Local pages: emergency tree service in Portland, Salem, Vancouver and Seattle. Before the next storm season, the tree risk checklist walks you around your own trees, and Oregon storm records and Washington storm records put this storm in context.

How this page was built

Every number above is computed from NOAA’s Storm Events bulk files for episodes 177513, 177512, 177505, 177504, 176674, 176697, 176673, 175985, 177506, 177507, 176698, 176177, 176179, 177516, 177514, 176675. Episodes were chosen by ranking all Washington and Oregon episodes from 2016 to mid-2026 on tree-relevant report counts, property damage and tree mentions, and episodes from different offices or states were merged when their narratives describe the same system on the same dates. NOAA files the ice and the wind as separate episodes; this page groups them because they hit the same area in the same week. Several Portland office narratives for the windstorm read as unfinished drafts, so impacts there may be under-described. Cascade snow episodes from the same days are left out. Damage figures are NOAA’s nominal-dollar estimates and are often blank. See all storms on the storm history index and the site’s methodology.