High winds, mountain snows hits Northwest
Topics: From the Wires, News
This NOAA satellite image taken Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012, at 02:00 PM EST, shows a frontal system moving into the Pacific Northwest and northern California bringing rain and heavy mountain snow. Snow will continue to fall over the Great Basin as the system moves eastward. A cold front moving south over the Northern Plains will bring snow showers. (AP Photo/Weather Underground)(Credit: AP)SEATTLE (AP) — The strongest Northwest storm of the season blew in early Monday on winds that gusted to more than 80 mph on the coast, knocking out power in places and creating blizzard-like conditions in the mountains.
The storm is headed east along the U.S.-Canada border, said meteorologist Danny Mercer.
“It doesn’t look like a big snow or wind producer for the rest of the U.S. It looks like the biggest impact was here,” he said.
But another storm is splitting off from that — “part of the same trough” — and heading south. It’s likely to bring snow along the Rockies, include the Boulder-Denver area, late Tuesday into Wednesday, Mercer said.
Weather in much of western Washington and western Oregon remained unsettled Monday.
Wet snow pellets that looked like hail hit an area of south Everett during the Monday evening commute, depositing ice along Interstate 5, said Greg Phipps, a Washington state Transportation Department spokesman. That snarled commuter traffic in both directions.
The highest winds hit Sunday evening with an 84 mph gust recorded at the mouth of the Columbia River and an 81 mph gust on the central Oregon coast, said meteorologist Scott Weishaar in Portland.
Winds early Monday hit 60 mph on the Washington coast and 55 mph in the south Puget Sound area, said meteorologist Ted Buehner in Seattle.
Winds brought tree limbs down on power lines. Seattle City Light had 11,000 customers out of service at one time. Puget Sound Energy had 17,000 outages, mostly in the south King County area, southeast of Seattle.
Portland General Electric responded to dozens of power outages in the metro area. Pacific Power had about 10,000 outages throughout western Oregon.
Winds knocked a tree onto a home in Lakewood, Wash., near where a 2-year-old was sleeping, but it missed the baby’s crib. Winds also were blamed for sinking two boats on Lake Washington at Kirkland, Wash., and the fire department helped two people who were sleeping on one of the boats, KOMO Radio reported.
Heavy snow fell in the mountains. Accumulations from the storm that started Sunday were likely to total 2 to 3 feet by Tuesday morning in the Washington Cascades, Buehner said.
Snow is already on the ground in parts of Eastern Washington, including Spokane, but downtown streets were clear by Monday afternoon.
“A wide variety of winter weather is clearly affecting the entire state,” Buehner said. “It’s the strongest storm of the year, so far.”
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