SEATTLE — A Pacific Northwest storm that brought snow, ice and powerful winds left a mess of fallen trees and power lines Friday as tens of thousands of residents already without power faced the prospect of a cold, dark weekend. Flooding became a regionwide concern.
While temperatures warmed and the icy, snowy conditions abated in western Washington and Oregon, slick roads and fast-melting snow brought challenges for road workers, city officials and rescue crews. The region also faces more rain as swelling rivers lead to the worst flooding some Oregon counties have seen in more than a decade.
“It’s definitely a trial we get to endure,” said Jeanette Donigan, whose Turner, Ore., home was surrounded by floodwaters, leaving her and her family to seek shelter nearby. “But earthly possessions can be replaced, as long as we got our children to higher ground.”
The storm system has been blamed for three deaths: a mother and her 1-year-old boy, who died after torrential rain swept away their car from an Albany, Ore., grocery store parking lot Wednesday night; and an elderly man fatally injured Thursday by a falling tree as he was backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a backyard shed near Seattle.
A 35-year-old woman who drove a Ford Mustang into 4 feet of floodwaters in Oregon’s Willamette Valley was plucked from a roof Friday by deputies who arrived by boat to save her. It was one of a number of dramatic rescues in western Oregon, left sodden by as much as 10 inches of rain in a day and a half that has brought the region’s worst flooding in 15 years.
Chicago plays it safe•CHICAGO — City officials worked Friday to prevent a repeat of last year’s “snowmageddon,” when a blizzard left hundreds of drivers stranded on one of the city’s main thoroughfares for up to 12 hours.
With the city getting socked by its first major snowstorm of the winter, officials detoured buses off icy Lake Shore Drive, which runs along Lake Michigan. No significant problems had developed yet, said Transit spokesman Brian Steele, adding: “The decision was made solely as a precaution.” The Associated Press
