In a winter that's seen storms split apart by a quirky, El Niño-driven jet stream, one of the strongest storms of the year will hit northwest Oregon and southwest Washington on Friday, forecasters said.

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"It will be pretty strong, with winds up to 70 mph on exposed headlands and the beaches,'' said Tiffani Brown, a forecaster for the

Winds of 60 to 70 mph and 1 to 2 inches of rain will hit coastal mountain ridge tops.

In addition to heavy rain, the Cascades and Cascade foothill will be walloped with more snow, as much as 2 to 3 feet in the higher elevations, Brown said.

The National Weather Service has issued a

, and a winter storm watch has also been issued for the Cascades.

Oregon's snowpack made a sharp rebound last weekend, and will get another bump this weekend. Snowpack is near 70 percent of average, said Jon Lea, a hydrologist for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.

All that snow is good news for summer water users, said George Taylor of Applied Climate Services in Corvallis.

"Rain that falls in November is already gone, washed out into rivers and then the ocean,'' Taylor said. "Falling closer to the growing season makes it more useful. An inch of rain now is like five inches that fell in November."

Taylor said that's the irony of water supplies in the West: A lot of the moisture falls in the higher elevations in the winter, but is needed at lower elevations in summer, which really shows the importance of snowpacks, he said.

Although Taylor said the storm looks very powerful, "it's not panic time."

"The Oregon coast is used to getting 70 mph winds, so there shouldn't be too many problems,'' he said.

Expect rain into the weekend, with another storm arriving Sunday night.

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