SPOKANE — Snoqualmie Pass was closed because of avalanche danger on Tuesday as another snowstorm closed schools in Eastern Washington, covered roads with ice and snow and snarled traffic. Numerous highways were closed.
Classes in Spokane School District 81, one of the largest in the state, were canceled for a second consecutive day Tuesday, the first snow days in the district since 1996. The problem was treacherous roads that made travel to schools difficult for some 30,000 students, officials said.
Schools in outlying communities and Eastern Washington University in Cheney, southwest of here, also were closed.
Avalanche danger forced officials to close I-90 at Snoqualmie Pass, the state’s main east-west artery across the Cascade Range, on Tuesday morning. The pass will remain closed until this morning because snow continued to fall, said Meagan McFadden of the state Department of Transportation.
“The avalanche crew is trying to determine what the danger is,” she said.
Since crews closed the pass at 7:25 a.m. Tuesday, they have removed over one million cubic yards of snow, enough to fill 129,000 dump trucks.
Traffic across the pass was halted after an avalanche early Tuesday morning. The slide hit six miles east of the 3,011-foot summit, blocking the eastbound lanes and stranding a number of vehicles. All were cleared and no one was injured.
Sections of several state highways in Eastern Washington were also closed because of drifting snow.
“There is blowing and drifting snow with compact snow and ice on all state highways to the south and west of Spokane,” said Al Gilson of the Transportation Department, including U.S. 2, U.S. 195 and highways 23, 27 and 231.
The latest storm temporarily knocked out power to about 1,000 customers of Avista Utilities in the Spokane region, a spokesman said.
Also, Inland Power and Light Co. reported about 2,800 customers temporarily without power, mostly in the Cheney, Rosalia, Rockford, Newman Lake and Deer Park areas.
In the latest of a series of storms, snow started falling in the Spokane area about 2 a.m. Tuesday and dropped 2.9 inches at the Spokane International Airport, the National Weather Service said.
That came on top of more than 11 inches that fell in a weekend storm.
There was so much snow in the Spokane region that the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office warned that people who shoveled snow off their property and onto streets could be arrested for disorderly conduct.
“While we sympathize with the amount of snow that property owners have to deal with this year, their solution can’t be to dump it on public streets,” sheriff’s Sgt. Martin O’Leary said.
The Spokane region was forecast to get another 3 to 6 inches of snow tonight, the Weather Service said.
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