WeatherFanatics: Damaging Windstorm Kills Three in Washington State

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Damaging Windstorm Kills Three in Washington State

By Katy Galimberti, AccuWeather.com Staff Writer

November 18,2015; 10:48PM,EST

A powerful storm unleashed damaging winds across the Northwestern U.S. on Tuesday, killing three people.
Two people were killed in separate incidents in Spokane, Washington. One man was killed when a tree crashed onto his car. A woman was killed as a falling tree took down power lines, according to the Associated Press.
Another man was killed in Sultan, Washington, approximately 40 miles northwest of Seattle.

Storm Blasts Washington With Flooding, Deadly Wind

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency Wednesday as a result of the storm, which was part of a series of storms to affect the Northwest. The state's National Guard will be available for service if needed.

View image on Twitter

WA Emergency Mgmt @waEMD

We had a blackhawk helicopter fly over the flooded Snoqualmie River so we had better situational awareness #wawx

5:04 PM - 18 Nov 2015

A local resident described the scene in Spokane as "raining shingles along with power lines."
Winds gusted up to 71 mph in Spokane on Tuesday afternoon. A 137-mph gust was measured at the Mission Ridge Ski area in Chelan County, Washington.
The storm cut power to hundreds of thousands of people across the state. According to the National Weather Service in Spokane, utilities reported more power outages than the ice storm in 1996 that killed four people and cost the city $22 million.
At the height of the storm, over 300,000 were without power. More than 29,000 Puget Sound Energy customers remained without power across the state as of 7:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday.
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AccuWeather Severe Weather Center
Winds were so strong that a dust storm lowered visibility to a quarter of a mile on Tuesday afternoon in some areas around Spokane, according to an NWS trained spotter.
Local officials urged residents to stay inside in Spokane for several hours. As of early local time Wednesday morning, crews were still working to clear trees off roadways around the city.

A tree fell in a Spokane, Wash., resident's yard on Tuesday. (Instagram Photo/tealaeves)
Locally flooding rainfall, mountain snow and damaging winds pounded coastal British Columbia, Washington and Oregon through Tuesday night.
Some locations received nearly a month's worth of rain in just the first 15 days.