Global Rumblings: Three dead, over 1 million without power, Severe Storm N.W

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Three dead, over 1 million without power, Severe Storm N.W

At least three people are dead and more than 1 million lost power Tuesday as powerful winds raked the Pacific Northwest and parts of the interior Northwest.

Wind-blown waves batter houses Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015, in Seattle. Rain and high winds snarled the morning commute in the Puget Sound area and the Inland Northwest braced for severe weather that could include wind gusts to 70 mph.

Winds were clocked as high as 119 mph in the mountains of Washington state while urban centers were buffeted by winds strong enough to cause extensive damage to trees and buildings, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people in the Seattle and Spokane areas.

Heavy rain is also causing its share of problems, contributing to serious flooding in parts of western Washington.

(FORECAST: High Winds, Heavy Rain and Snow Impacting the Pacific Northwest)

Here are the latest impacts from this system.

Washington

Falling trees were blamed for three deaths, extensive power outages and structural damage Tuesday in Washington.

A man in his 20s was killed when a tree came down on his car near Monroe Tuesday afternoon. A spokesperson from the Snohomish County Fire District 5 told Seattle television station KOMO that the incident occurred on Ben Howard Road around 1 p.m. local time.

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A windblown tree snapped off and struck a King County Metro Bus in the north Seattle suburb of Shoreline, sending the driver to the hospital with neck and back pain. (King County Sheriff's Office)

A woman in her 50s was killed in her car by a falling tree near the corner of 14th Ave and Division Street in Spokane, reported Assistant Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer of the Spokane Fire Department. The tree was reported to have fallen around 3:30 p.m. local time.

Another driver was killed in a fatal collision with a tree that fell onto State Route 904 near Cheney in eastern Washington, according to Washington State Patrol District 4 public information officer Jeff Sevigney.

Conditions were so bad that the Greater Spokane Department of Emergency Management issued a "shelter in place" bulletin around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, advising all residents to stay in a sheltered location. The bulletin said "extreme winds" were resulting in downed trees and flying debris in the Spokane area.

Spokane schools have canceled Wednesday classes, KREM.com reported.

In all, at least 522,000 customers had lost power at one time or another in Washington as of midnight Tuesday night.

"Given the typical ratio of power customers to actual people, this means at least 1 million people were affected by power outages in Washington alone," said weather.com senior meteorologist Nick Wiltgen.

High winds caused widespread power outages. The worst of the outages were in the Spokane area, where the National Weather Service office tweeted that the power outages are among the most extensive ever seen in Spokane's history. Electric utility Avista said 70 percent of its 181,000 Spokane County customers were without powershortly after midnight early Wednesday.

In some areas, powerless residents ventured out to look for dinner in restaurants that had power, unable to cook their own. KOMO-TV reported some customers were willing to eat in the dark at Mukilteo restaurant Brooklyn Bros. Pizza.

"People were turning on their flashlights on their phones and continuing to eat," Bailey Forman, a cashier at the restaurant, told KOMO. "It was awesome and then I started lighting candles on the tables so people could kind of see, but there's not much we could do."

The winds damaged far more than just power lines. In the north Seattle suburb of Shoreline, a windblown tree snapped off and struck a King County Metro Bus, sending the driver to the hospital with neck and back pain.

The King County Sheriff's Office says it happened just before 10 a.m. Tuesday as officials were receiving many calls about downed trees during a heavy wind and rain storm. The tree struck the Route 331 bus near Shoreline Community College. The driver was the only person on board. She was taken to Northwest Hospital.

A building in downtown Spokane has had its roof cave in. Five people evacuated safely, according to KHQ-TV in Spokane.

Another report of a car crushed by a downed tree surfaced in Spokane. The woman who was driving emerged unharmed, reported local television station KREM.

Part of the roof on the SpokAnimal adoption center building in Spokane was blown off, according to storm reports relayed by the National Weather Service.

The Washington Department of Transportation shut down a 17-mile stretch of Interstate 90 from the Vantage Bridge to Adams Road, five miles east of George, Tuesday afternoon due to poor visibility from blowing dust.

The DOT told Reuters that a mudslide closed parts of State Route 20, north of Seattle, while flooding and downed trees forced the closure of a stretch of U.S. Route 2.

A 119-mph wind gust was clocked by an anemometer on White Pass in the Cascade Range Tuesday afternoon. White Pass is located about 80 miles southeast of Seattle. Several other mountain locations gusted over 110 mph Tuesday.

Heavy rain from this windstorm, in addition to rain from another strong Pacific storm last week, sent rivers above flood stage in western Washington, with the worst flooding occurring north and northeast of Seattle.

Three Dead, 1 Million Lose Power in Destructive Northwest Windstorm | The Weather Channel:
http://www.weather.com/news/weather/news/northwest-high-winds-rain-snow-impacts

http://www.newson6.com/story/30545236/3-killed-thousands-without-power-in-northwest-wind-storm

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