SPOKANE — Heavy snow snapped power lines, closed streets and schools, and prompted official warnings to stay off the roads as another round of severe winter weather was expected to hit the area.
An estimated 4,000 people in Eastern Washington and northern Idaho were without electricity because of the storm, which left more than a foot of new snow in some areas and was expected to bring more in the coming days.
The snow was falling so heavily and quickly that city crews have to keep re-plowing major roads just to keep up. “It just keeps coming,” Dave Mandyke of Spokane Public Works told The Spokesman-Review newspaper.
Many Spokane city and county employees were getting the day off Monday, and Spokane Public Schools and some other districts were closing for the day. Officials also asked private employers to consider closing.
Officials were concerned that cold temperatures would make roads even more treacherous, and keeping people home would help crews clear the roads, Spokane Mayor Mary Verner said.
“It’s not an emergency,” Verner said. “It’s just major snowstorm of a kind that we have not seen in many years.”
Farther west, wintry weather also forced the closure of the Tri-Cities Airport. The State Patrol logged dozens of car crashes because of the weather, the Tri-City Herald reported.
Avista spokesman Hugh Imhof said Medical Lake was the largest area without power, with spots in Spokane, Pullman and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho also dark. “It’s pretty much everywhere,” he told The Spokesman-Review.
It was not immediately known when Avista would be able to restore power to many locations. Imhof told the newspaper that about 30 crews were working on the problem, which is close to the utility’s maximum.
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