The four-day barrage of storms hitting the Pacific Northwest knocked out power to tens of thousands, downed trees onto houses and cars and flooded roads. Mudslides were reported at Tillamook, Oregon, Lake Tahoe and Garberville, California, and Chelan, Washington. However, if you believe some AccuWeather.com readers, it never happened. We received these comments on Facebook:

7.73 inches of rain flooded Harbor, Oregon, while 16 inches of snow fell at Lincoln County, Wyoming. Buoy #46248, about 50 miles west of Oregon's coast, measured waves to 27 feet. Several tornadoes were reported -- one waterspout came onshore at Manzanita, Oregon, causing EF-2 damage, the strongest tornado ever recorded in the county (out of only three since 1950).

Five states had winds over 90 mph! Here are the highest gusts:

- Squaw Valley, CA: 129 mph
- Tillamook, OR: 103 mph
- Washoe, NV: 101 mph
- Megler, WA: 94 mph
- Clark, WY: 90 mph
- Pikes Peak, CO: 90 mph

Why the disconnect? There are a couple of different reasons. Primarily, the commenters above are suffering from what I call the "IMBY" syndrome, something that has been happening after a snowstorm in the Northeast, since the beginning of Internet time. An example: Snow amounts are reported to one foot, but I'm a commenter who only got 8 inches IMBY (In My Back Yard), so I dispute that the higher amounts happened, so I, Mr. Commenter, believe the storm was overhyped.

(Read more below this graphical representation of the cornucopia of over 65 warnings issued, which led to 400 severe weather reports):

It's easy to blame these type of comments completely on IMBY syndrome, but looking closer, this storm was overhyped by some media outlets, and a lot of that hype came from the meteorological oddity that the energy from the first low pressure area came from Typhoon Songda. What's interesting to meteorologists is sometimes hard for the media to rephrase into something the Average Joe can read.

AccuWeather's Forecast Last Tuesday

Please note, though, that the article above quoted the National Weather Service, which actually underhyped the storm, predicting maximum wind gusts of 70 mph, as did AccuWeather, who predicted 80. That said, the NWS believes the storm was not as strong as they forecast (at least in populated areas) and offers an explanation for that on their Facebook page. Everything that AccuWeather predicted in their Tuesday forecast happened (and the winds were even higher), and there were so it's disappointing to see comments like those above from readers.

Just a selection of the videos available from this storm on our Video Wall (here's a wrapup).

One final potential thought -- the "risk" map above is sometimes interpreted by readers as a "guarantee" map, though I'm not sure how we could solve that. Although all of the bullet points above occurred in the risk areas, they didn't occur at everyone's house. This is further complicated by the topography in the West -- some of the most extreme reports from the storms may occur at high locations, which may not be representative of the weather in the valleys, where most of the population lives.

There were so many photos of the storm on social media that we created a story featuring some of them.

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