PORTLAND DRIZZLE

🐞 It’s Saturday! After a week of atmospheric-river chaos, Saturday offers a brief reprieve- partly cloudy, high near 48°F, just 15% chance of rain. A good day to touch grass. The PCC strike continues with no deal in sight, and your SE Portland Trader Joe's is still a hard hat zone.

Bryan and Adilene Padilla moved into a two-bedroom apartment on NE Oregon Street in November, and almost immediately knew something was off — the smell, the scurrying sounds, the mounting mouse droppings, the holes in the walls. Management laid poison and plugged gaps. The mice were unimpressed. Then on December 22, Adilene called her husband at the box factory where he works: their 10-month-old son, Iker, had found a dead mouse on the floor and put it in his mouth like he was sampling a cheese plate. Bryan left work immediately. They rushed Iker to the emergency room, where a nurse found no signs of rabies but told the parents to monitor him for symptoms. The kid appears to be fine. The parents are not fine. They've since packed up and fled, and last month filed suit against the building's owners and property manager Avenue5 — seeking $122,000 in damages and $2,665 in back rent. Avenue5 did not respond to a request for comment. Unclear if the mice did either.

Multnomah County health officials confirmed this week that a person infected with measles visited the WinCo Foods in Gresham on March 7 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. — meaning anyone unvaccinated who was also hunting for bulk trail mix that afternoon may have been exposed. Measles can linger in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves a room, which is doing a lot of heavy lifting as a public health fact right now. Officials are urging anyone who was there during that window to check their vaccination status. Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective, so if you're current, breathe easy. If you're not — and you develop a fever, cough, runny nose, or rash in the next three weeks — call your doctor before showing up anywhere. Oregon has seen a national uptick in measles cases this year as vaccination rates have slipped.

The atmospheric river that drenched the metro area this week didn't just flood basements and ruin commutes — it also sent a chunk of SW Portland's Markham neighborhood sliding downhill. A landslide closed SW 45th Avenue near Laurel Street, prompting emergency road closures and leaving residents scrambling for alternate routes. PBOT crews are assessing the damage, but there's no firm reopening timeline. SW Portland's hilly terrain has long made it vulnerable during heavy rain events, and this week's rainfall totals — which broke records at PDX — pushed already-saturated slopes past their limit. This is the third weather-related road closure in the area this month. Climate scientists will note, without irony, that this is exactly what they said would happen.

Happy Pi Day. On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany.

Wash your hands, check your vaccination card, and maybe avoid any apartment managed by Avenue5. If you're heading out tonight, throw on that light jacket — 48 degrees and mostly dry is as good as it gets in March. We'll take it. by Michael Simpson Contact: [email protected]