Sunday, January 22, 2012

Winds arrive in storm-weary Pacific Northwest

Manuel Valdes and Nigel Duara in the Seattle Times: Strong winds descended on the storm-weary Pacific Northwest and thousands of people remained without power Saturday after a winter storm left a tangle of fallen trees and damaged power lines. Around 195,000 customers remained without electricity, reported Puget Sound Energy, one of the region's largest utilities. That was down from a peak of more than 260,000 customers.

Wind gusts close to 50 mph arrived in much of the region, which could combine with the remaining snow to bring down more trees. Four snowmobilers were rescued from near-whiteout conditions in Todd Lake, west of Bend.

"It's a recipe for more down branches and potential power outages," said National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis D'Amico. "The good news is that we've had above freezing temperatures for over 24 hours. We're on our way to melting the snow."

In Oregon, worries about flooding and high winds subsided Saturday. Highways along the coast were closed for several hours as high water crept over roadways, but warnings of potential flooding in Benton County proved unfounded...

Des Moines, Washington seen from Point Robinson, Maury Island, Washington, shot by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

No comments: