NEW Wild weather rips through Cascades

YAKIMA, Wash. — Bill Cagle spent a harrowing night in his family’s North Fork Road home outside Tampico as high winds shook the structure and knocked out power.

“It kept me up most of the night,” the 52-year-old Cagle said of high winds that ripped through the area, shearing off trees and dropping power poles. “I could hear the wind gusts slamming the house. The house was shaking. It’s a sold A-frame cabin, but the place was shaking.”

Tampico, west of Yakima, was on the leading edge of a major storm that ripped across the Cascade Mountains late Tuesday and early Wednesday.

Across Central Washington, high winds and heavy rains triggered mudslides, avalanches, highway closures, power failures — and some flooding that could get worse before it gets better.

Two people were treated for minor injuries after being pulled from a house that was badly damaged in a massive avalanche at the Hyak ski area just east of Snoqualmie Pass summit.

Elsewhere in Central Washington no serious injuries were reported as a result of downed trees and high water.

All three of the state’s major east-west mountain passes were closed for much of Wednesday. A mudslide closed White Pass shortly after 7:30 a.m. just east of the Rimrock tunnel.

In addition, U.S. Highway 97 was closed from Ellensburg to its junction with U.S. Highway 2.

High winds forced the closure of Interstate 82 between Yakima and Ellensburg for eight hours before it was re-opened about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Just when mountain traffic will resume couldn’t be determined Wednesday and the decision likely will be affected by additional rain forecast for Central Washington.

The National Weather Service predicts up to three more inches of rain before a cold front brings cooler temperatures and a drying-out to the region this weekend.

“We will have heavy rains on the crest of the Cascades of from 1 to 3 inches up there yet to come,” said Marilyn Lohmann, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Pendleton, Ore. “That will continue to  keep things rising. We have had quite a lot of small streams flooding.”

No serious injuries were reported in the region Wednesday.

Kittitas County commissioners declared a state of emergency as creeks near Ellensburg flowed out of their banks. The Weather Service issued a flood warning for Kittitas County.

The mudslides can be blamed on the heavy rains that fell along the Cascade crest overnight. Lohmann said three inches of rain fell at the crest as the storm moved across the state.

A weather station on Sedge Ridge, west of Tampico, measured wind gusts of 114 mph shortly after 9 p.m., about the time Cagle lost power at his house.

Gusts exceeded 100 miles per hour between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m. Wednesday.

“I felt like the house was going to pick up and blow away,” recalled Cagle, a rehabilitation consultant who works in Yakima.

Jennine Frisbee, who operates the Tampico Store, said a tree fell and hit the corner of her house, knocking out power.

“I felt like I was in labor,” Frisbee said in a telephone interview. “It took our biggest tree down and took the corner of the house and the power box.”

The scene of downed trees was repeated in numerous places in the Tampico area.

Pacific Power was still struggling to restore power to about 170 customers late Wednesday afternoon in the Tampico area.

Originally, almost 400 customers lost power there late Tuesday night.

A larger outage occurred along Chinook Pass, west of the intersection with U.S. Highway 12. The 943 customers affected had power restored by early Wednesday.

The Chinook Pass area also was the scene of a large number of downed trees that blocked the highway, forcing closure of about 30 miles of the road.

Matt Pietrusiewicz, road maintenance manager for Yakima County, said Bumping River Road was closed by a mudslide that struck about three miles from the intersection with Chinook Pass.

“We had a big night last night with the trees,” Pietrusiewicz said Wednesday. “We had a lot of trees down.”

Unlike Kittitas County, where Reecer and Currier creeks flowed out of their banks and water covered Reecer Creek Road, Yakima County found few road problems or flooding.

But Pietrusiewicz said small streams in the county, particularly Ahtanum Creek, did rise during the day Wednesday. He is concerned about what today will bring with more rain in the forecast.

“I’d anticipate Thursday will be a busier day,” he said. “We are expecting the creeks to continue to rise.”

A flood warning also is in effect for the Yakima River, which is forecast to slightly exceed flood stage on Friday. Even with the increase in flows, no major flooding concerns exist.

Benton County now expects the Yakima River to reach flood stage on Saturday.

Chuck Garner, river operations supervisor for the Bureau of Reclamation, said the agency is trying to store as much water as it can in the five major reservoirs. But he added much of the high water is the result of rain and snowmelt below the elevation of the lakes.