SEATTLE – A storm dumped as much as 2 feet of snow Monday on some parts of Washington state and left thousands of people without power.
“There’s cars in the ditches all up and down the road,” said Don Bowman, who drove 20 miles from Blaine, near the Canadian border, to Bellingham to buy tire chains after he was unable to find any still available in his hometown.
In Seattle, Qwest Field, the home of the Seattle Seahawks, turned into a winter wonderland just in time for their Monday night game against the Green Bay Packers – no strangers to harsh winter conditions. Steady snow began falling 20 minutes before kickoff and tapered off as the game progressed.
Much of the heaviest snowfall had been in northwest Washington’s Whatcom County, with more than a foot falling in Ferndale by Monday morning. But later Monday, a low pressure system moved in over Island, Skagit and Snohomish counties, accompanied by an arctic front that was pushing more snow south into Seattle and King County.
Roads were already a mess by the Monday evening commute in Everett, north Seattle and Seattle’s eastern suburbs, with cars sliding off I-405, and more snow, combined with low temperatures, was expected to make ice a problem for commuters today as well. About 1 to 3 inches were expected in Seattle, where a snow advisory was in effect through 5 a.m. today.
The snowfall was capping off a month of heavy rain in Seattle – and was possibly enough to help make November the wettest single month since record-keeping began. As of Monday, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where official measurements are kept, had received 15.08 inches of precipitation – the most since 15.33 inches were recorded in downtown Seattle in December 1933.
“It’s kind of ironic that after all that rain we could be breaking the record with snow,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Danny Mercer in Seattle. “It doesn’t happen this way very often.”
Rural parts of Skagit County, near the town of Concrete, reported 24 inches of snow Monday. Puget Sound Energy spokeswoman Dorothy Bracken said crews were working to restore about 100 small outages, each affecting one to seven customers, in Skagit, Whatcom, Island and Kitsap counties.
“We’re working on restoring power from Sunday’s storm, but today’s weather brought in new outages in those same areas,” she said.
In Eastern Washington, temperatures were expected to drop to single digits later in the week – a concern considering that roads are already slick with ice and snow following snowfall Sunday and Monday. The storm dumped 5 inches of snow in Leavenworth, 7 inches in Winthrop, 8 inches in Kettle Falls and 31/2 inches in Spokane, where law enforcement agencies were swamped by traffic accident calls.
Washington State Patrol troopers had responded to 170 crashes in the Spokane area by Monday morning, trooper Mark Baker said.
“The main problem is drivers going too fast for conditions,” he said.
In central Washington, which received as much as 7 inches of snow, a Bridgeport woman and her two sons died in a two-vehicle crash on U.S. 2/97 near Orondo on Sunday evening.
In southwestern Washington, a tractor-trailer jackknifed on I-5, causing a 14-car accident with no major injuries, said State Patrol Sgt. Monica Hunter.
Classes were canceled in many school districts around the state.
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