Violent weather leads to 3 deaths in Washington state

A state of emergency was declared in Washington state late Wednesday after a deadly storm blew down trees, triggered mudslides and left thousands of people without power.

A woman in her 50s was killed when a tree fell in Spokane. Their identities were not yet available.

The National Weather Service has forecasted rain and wind in the area for much of the rest of the week. More than 104,000 customers in the area were without power. “Crews are working around the clock to restore power to customers impacted by Tuesday’s damaging windstorm”, a message on the PSE website reads. “We now have a total of 78 crews along with servicemen, tree crews, damage assessors and hundreds of support personnel in the field”.

“This is the largest crisis Avista has experienced in the company’s 126-year history”, Avista said in a news release.

“Storm damage is spread throughout the city and will take time to assess and clean up”, Mayor David Condon said.

In Portland, an 80-year-old woman spent the night trapped in bed after a tree fell on her home and missed her by inches during the wind storm. When firefighters arrived, the woman told them she had a few scratches but wasn’t hurt.

She told officials that she had gone to bed earlier than usual Tuesday because her home lost power. The tree landed on the car’s roof directly over the driver’s seat, killing him instantly, said Fire Chief Merlin Halverson. This morning, KREM-TV reported dozens of school districts in Idaho and Washington canceled classes for the third straight day Friday. Gonzaga, Whitworth, Washington State-Spokane and Eastern Washington universities were shut down Wednesday.

Winds gusted up to 71 miles per hour in Spokane on Tuesday afternoon.

More than 360,000 customers were without power in the Puget Sound region, a local utilities reported late on Tuesday. That number had dropped to about 11,000 by Thursday morning, and the utility said most customers would regain power by the end of the day.

The storm that originated in the Gulf of Alaska could be a harbinger of El Nino, the ocean-warming phenomenon that’s predicted to bring heavy rain to the West in the coming months, said Kathy Hoxsie of the National Weather Service.

The storm also dumped almost three feet of snow in parts of Colorado over the last few days, with the strong winds causing snow drifts several feet high.