Several businesses in Battle Ground in the area of Wico were damaged after a severe thunderstorm swept through North Clark County on Monday, May 15.
Main Street Floral Company, which was one of the businesses affected by the storm, took to its Facebook page to share what happened.
“A new roof was being finished up today. The roofing project started last week. Unfortunately, the minute the rain started, water began coming through the ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and down the walls,” Main Street Floral Company stated in its Facebook post.
As of Friday, the business was closed to in person customers as they worked to address the damage, but people are still able to order items from their website.
Alongside Main Street Floral Company, some of the other businesses that were affected by interior flooding included Ink Ability, Legions Realty, Battle Ground Martial Arts Academy, The Studio Dance Company and Pitner Tax Company.
A GoFundMe to support the businesses was created by Fallon Taylor, who runs the Battle Ground Kindness Facebook group, but was later taken down because of possible implications for the businesses.
Taylor encouraged people to help out in person if they are available.
“The people that run these businesses are amazing and I promise you they could use any help they can get,” Taylor stated.
On May 15, at around 1:20 p.m. the National Weather Service of Portland issued a flood watch for the afternoon and evening of Monday. Isolated thunderstorms appeared on the radar with the chance of moving through the North Clark County area.
At 4:15 p.m. that day, the National Weather Service radar showed a small green spot just north of Yacolt that was slowly moving to the south. Then at around 4:21 p.m., the radar picked up on heavier rainfall as the storm was still in the Yacolt area. In just 12 minutes, the storm nearly doubled in size and the heavy rain appeared in a much more sizable section of the radar.
The first two cloud-to-ground lightning strikes were shown on The Weather Channel’s radar at 4:35 p.m. By 5:33 p.m., the storm’s core stretched from Washington State University’s Vancouver campus to Amboy, which was shown on the National Weather Service radar with the bullseye of the storm focused over areas just north of Battle Ground.
Clark Public Utilities Public Information Officer Dameon Pesanti confirmed that 18 transformers were replaced over the night of Monday, May 15 due to lightning.
Meteorologists from the National Weather Service tallied up around 100 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, other meteorologists reported upwards of 200 lightning strikes from the storm, both estimates can be deemed a rare feat for Western Washington storms.
“The biggest rain report that the NWS reported was one mile south of Amboy and that was a 1.70 inch rain amount that fell in 50 minutes,” Rod Hill, a meteorologist for KGW, said in a phone interview with The Reflector.
On top of the 1.70 inches of rainfall just south of Amboy, the National Weather Service collected data of rainfall from other locations in the bullseye of the storm with two locations in Battle Ground receiving 0.80 inches and 0.74 inches. Yacolt ended up with 1.24 inches of rain.
The storm was reported to have reached max intensity just north of Battle Ground.
Hill mentioned storms similar to the one on May 15 have produced tornadoes in the Battle Ground area in the past.
According to previous reporting in The Reflector, in September of 2021, a low-category tornado cut across Clark County north of Battle Ground and caused damage south of the East Fork Lewis River. The bulk of the damage from the tornado in 2021 occurred between Northeast 92nd Avenue and Northeast 147th Avenue.
Extended weather reports for North Clark County show Wednesday, May 24 reaching a high of 73 degrees with intervals of clouds and sunshine. The high for the week is forecasted to hit 80 degrees on Friday, May 26 with partly cloudy weather throughout the week.
