NATIONAL STORM SUMMARY

NOVEMBER 2006

5th-11th...A windy Pacific storm dumped heavy rain Monday on western
Washington, killing at least one person, prompting warnings of record
flooding and closing the main road in Mount Rainier National Park. A
20-year-old elk hunter from Seattle died when his pickup truck was
swept into the Cowlitz River south of Mount Rainier, authorities said.
Gov. Chris Gregoire declared a state of emergency for 18 counties,
authorizing the National Guard to activate and the state Emergency
Management Division to coordinate assistance. Officials at Mount
Rainier National Park, which had 7 inches of rain Sunday and was
expecting 10 more Monday, closed the main park road, turned visitors
away and sent employees home early via the only exit road open. "We
want to prevent visitors getting trapped inside the park. The road is
vulnerable to washouts in several key places, and there is only one way
out," superintendent Dave Uberagua said.
A sheriff's helicopter in Snohomish County, just north of Seattle,
rescued
several transients stranded on a sandbar where they had been camping.
Evacuations were being encouraged in parts of Skagit County near the
Canadian
border, with the Skagit River expected to reach record levels, county
spokesman
Dan Berentson said. The National Weather Service warned county
officials to expect worse conditions than in 2003, when flooding caused
$17 million in property damage in Concrete and 3,400 households were
evacuated, he said. Residents began showing up at one shelter by
midday, and a hospital evacuated 15 patients as a precaution. The
warm-weather rainstorms, propelled by air currents from Hawaii in a
pattern called the Pineapple Express, could cause flooding of record
proportions, the weather service said. Several rivers had already
jumped their banks. The Army Corps of Engineers was sandbagging several
rivers. At least 200 hunters were evacuated from about 65 hunting camps
near the Cowlitz River. As of early Monday afternoon, Stampede Pass on
the Cascade crest east of Seattle had 4 1/2 inches of rain in the
previous 24 hours, while Seattle-Tacoma
International Airport recorded more than 2 1/2 inches. The forecast
called for 6
to 10 inches in the Cascades and about 3 inches in the Seattle area in
the 24
hours ending Monday night, with most rivers expected to crest Tuesday.
Record rainfall that brought heavy flooding to the Northwest, killing
at least one person, causing evacuations and damaging roads and houses,
began to ease Tuesday, as high waters continued to threaten some areas.
Flood waters threatened nearly 300 homes and cabins in Washington after
the Cowlitz River burst its banks and changed course near Packwood,
south of Mt. Rainier, said Deputy Stacy Brown of the Lewis County
sheriff's office. At least one house was swept away in the flood, she
said. She said about 19 households in the area called for help, but
mudslides and flooding had closed roads, making rescues more difficult.
About 20 people spent Monday night in Packwood's Four Square Church,
and more people were waiting Tuesday after being told their homes were
imperiled by the changing river flow. About 200 to 225 elk hunters were
evacuated Monday from hunting camps in the area, said Lewis County
Sheriff Steve Mansfield. A 20-year-old hunter died when his pickup
truck was swept into the river, authorities said. Tens of thousands of
children were given the day off from school Tuesday. There were fears
that voters in several Washington counties could have trouble reaching
polling places Tuesday, although it wasn't immediately clear what
problems, if any, they experienced. Most of the state's counties now
vote entirely by mail. Rainfall records were set Monday across western
Washington, including 8.22 inches at Stampede Pass, which broke an
all-time rain record of 7.29 inches set on Nov. 19, 1962. Milder storms
were expected later in the week but nothing as powerful as the storm
that caused the flooding, said Brent Bower, a Weather Service
hydrologist. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski declared an emergency Tuesday
in Tillamook County, where about 100 people were evacuated because of
rising floodwaters. The Pineapple Express storm, named for its origin
in warm Pacific waters, had dumped from 3 to 15 inches on Oregon by
Tuesday, mostly on the coast and the northwestern corner of the state.
Weather-related road closures were common, and affected parts of U.S.
Routes 101 and 26. Election officials in Clatsop County arranged to
have a dump truck pick up ballots Tuesday night in case of high water
on roads. Three luxury homes in Gleneden Beach were on the brink of
crumbling into the Pacific. On Tuesday morning, rock-loaded bulldozers
and dump trucks tried to create a break to protect the homes from the
high surf. West of Mount Hood, 17 homes in the town of Brightwood were
evacuated because of the rising Sandy River. Most rivers and streams in
the region were under flood watches or warnings. Rescuers used a boat
to pick up seven illegal campers stranded by rising waters on the Sandy
River delta near Troutdale, east of Portland. The area is known as a
homeless encampment. More than 100 people were told to leave their
homes in the northwest coastal town of Tillamook because of flooding,
and all major roads in the area were closed, Undersheriff Terry
Huntsman said.

A storm dumped more than 4 inches of rain Wednesday on parts of New
Jersey, flooding streets, sending small streams out of their banks and
causing lengthy flight delays. Firefighters in at least two
jurisdictions rescued people from vehicles stuck in floodwaters. No
injuries were reported. Rain fell at a rate of 1 inch per hour at
times. The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings for
several counties, and numerous highways were closed. Delays of more
than three hours were reported at Newark Liberty International Airport
late Wednesday afternoon.


12th-18th...A strong storm caused wintry weather in the West. In the
West, snow accumulation reached up to a foot in the Northern Rockies
and High Plains, while up to 8 inches fell in the Cascades and Sierras.
In western Washington, moderate to heavy rain pounded through the
region and caused flooding conditions.
Two major storm systems pounded through the separate coasts on Tuesday.
In addition, moist south winds triggered scattered precipitation across
the central U.S. Out West, the large Pacific storm system that covered
much of the West continued its eastward movement on Tuesday and carried
a cold front southward through the southern two-thirds of the West.
Rain and mountain snow persisted through Tuesday morning across the
Great Basin, Rockies as well as northern and central California. Some
heavy snow fell over the Central Rockies, especially along the west
side of the slopes.
Lines of powerful thunderstorms pelted the South with heavy wind, rain
and hail Wednesday, turning a skating rink into a hulk of twisted metal
soon after the 31 preschoolers and four adults inside had fled to the
only part of the building that turned out to be safe. One child
suffered a broken bone and another a cut to the head, but everyone else
emerged unharmed from the crumpled wreck of the Fun Zone Skate Center,
which doubled as a day-care facility. Authorities were unsure whether
it was a tornado that hit the skate center about 10:15 a.m.
Jon Slaughter, who owns two nearby businesses, arrived at the skating
center
with two employees about five minutes after the building was ripped
apart. The damage was so severe some witnesses were in disbelief that
everyone inside could have walked out. Two people crawled under the
beams and wreckage looking for kids, but everyone was already out. At
least one tornado cut a path about two miles wide and three or four
miles long in Greensburg, LA, toppling trees and damaging buildings and
power lines, said Maj. Michael Martin of the St. Helena Parish
Sheriff's Office. One man was killed when his home, a trailer covered
by a wooden structure, was destroyed, he said. In Mississippi's Lamar
County, emergency operations center director James Smith said a
possible tornado struck a subdivision outside Sumrall at about 2:50
a.m. "It appears to be a tornado from the reports of damage we've
received including 11 destroyed or damaged homes _ and from the track,"
Smith said. Smith said six people were taken to hospitals from the
Sumrall area, and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said two
other people were injured in Greene County. Along the Mississippi Gulf
Coast, devastated last year by Hurricane Katrina, heavy rain flooded
streets and closed some schools. City Hall in Biloxi suffered roof and
water damage, and Mayor A.J. Holloway told The Sun Herald it appeared
that a small tornado had touched down in the area. As the storms moved
eastward, as much as 4 inches of rain fell in southern Alabama,
flooding some homes, authorities reported. A tornado that hit a
community in rural Pike County destroyed a volunteer fire department
and knocked down a water tower, flooding the area where it landed, a
sheriff's official said. A possible tornado tore through a community
south of Montgomery, toppling trees, overturning a mobile home and
knocking out power at a school. Storms overturned trailers in the
southeast Alabama town of Elba, injuring several people, police
investigator Tony Harrison said. In Arkansas, the thunderstorms toppled
tractor-trailer rigs along Interstate 40 in Arkansas, and police said
at least four people were hospitalized. Authorities said a hotel near
Wheatley had structural damage. The storms caused flash flooding in
Arkansas, including the Little Rock area, where police said they
rescued two people who escaped high water by climbing trees. More than
3.5 inches of rain fell at Little Rock, including more than an inch in
20 minutes at the city's airport, the weather service said. Hail the
diameter of quarters pounded areas west of the city.
A tornado flipped cars, shredded trees and ripped mobile homes to
pieces in this little riverside community early Thursday, killing at
least eight people, authorities said. The disaster the two-day death
toll from a devastating line of thunderstorms that swept across the
South to 12. Kip Godwin, chairman of the Columbus County Commission,
said authorities had nearly concluded their search of the area where
all the deaths occurred - a cluster of trailers and an adjacent
neighborhood of brick homes - and had accounted for everyone. Hospital
officials said four children were in critical condition. The storms
that began Wednesday unleashed tornadoes and straight-line winds that
overturned mobile homes and tractor-trailers, uprooted trees and
knocked down power lines across the South. In Louisiana, a man died
Wednesday when a tornado struck his home.
In South Carolina, a utility worker checking power lines Thursday
during the storm was electrocuted. In North Carolina, two people died
in car crashes as heavy rain pounded the state, dropping as much as
five inches in some areas.
Off the coast, a Coast Guard helicopter lowered a pump to a fishing
boat that was taking on water in 15-foot seas about 50 miles from
Charleston. One crewman was aboard the 34-foot boat, which the Coast
Guard escorted back to land. The tornado that struck Riegelwood -
situated on the Cape Fear River about 20 miles west of Wilmington - hit
shortly after 6:30 a.m. "There was no warning. There was no time," said
Cissy Kennedy, a radiologist's assistant who lives in the area. "It
just came out from nowhere." As many as 40 mobile homes were damaged
before the tornado crossed a highway and leveled three brick homes.
Some of the dead were believed to be children. Household debris,
including carpet and a laundry basket, was scattered along a road. The
storm dumped a minivan in a ditch, and an open refrigerator that still
had food inside was filled with rainwater. County Commissioner Sammie
Jacobs said four to five mobile homes were demolished, and there were
"houses on top of cars and cars on top of houses."
"We've stepped across bodies to get to debris and search for other
bodies here this morning," Jacobs said. The storm knocked out power to
45,000 customers in North Carolina. The storm also caused minor
flooding in the Washington area, where rescuers grabbed several people
stranded in their vehicles, and slowed commuters as far north as
Newark, N.J.

19th-25th...Pounding surf and coastal flooding continued to batter the
East Coast on Thanksgiving day as a powerful nor'easter drifted
northward off the horeline.
The storm has been soaking the eastern Seaboard since Monday night,
when strong winds picked up along the Southeastern Coast. The storm sat
there until Wednesday night when it began to slowly move to the north
and east, raising tides along the oceanfront and in the bays. On
Thursday afternoon, tide gauges from Kings Point, NY to Money Point, VA
were reporting tides high enough to merit high water advisories. In the
Chesapeake Bay, tides were only just beginning to subside as winds
turned offshore, helping push water out past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge
Tunnel. In New England, storm winds were still on the rise Thursday
afternoon. At Boston's Logan International Airport, winds were gusting
to nearly 35 mph and were expected to continue to increase. Heavy rain
was also becoming problematic throughout the Northeast, this
Thanksgiving, with storm total rainfall accumulations well over 2
inches in many locations. A Pacific storm also continued to move ashore
in the Northwest on Thursday, bringing heavy rain and some high
elevation snow to Washington and Oregon. Clouds from this system spread
east into the Northern Plains, and from there a cold front created a
few clouds that dropped into the Four Corners states and Southern
California. Despite these few high clouds, The Weather in California
was gorgeous on Thursday with cool and crisp temperatures for most of
the state, and nearly cloudless skies for the state with the exception
of Extreme southern California.


26th-30th...The storm that dumped as much as 2 feet of snow on some
parts of Washington state turned freeways and city streets into icy
gridlock and left thousands of people without power. The snowfall was
capping off a month of heavy rain in Seattle _ which was edging closer
to a wettest-single-month record. As of 10 p.m. Monday, Seattle-Tacoma
International Airport, where official measurements are kept, had
received 15.26 inches of precipitation just .07 inches short of the
15.33 inches recorded in downtown Seattle in December 1933.
"It's kind of ironic that after all that rain we could be breaking
the record with snow," said National Weather Service meteorologist
Danny Mercer in Seattle. "It doesn't happen this way very often." In
central Washington, which received as much as 7 inches of snow, a
Bridgeport woman and her two sons died in a two-vehicle crash near
Orondo on Sunday evening. Roads were a mess by the Monday evening
commute in Everett, north Seattle and Seattle's eastern suburbs, with
cars sliding off Interstate 405. "There's cars in the ditches all up
and down the road," said Don Bowman, who drove 20 miles to buy tire
chains after he was unable to find any still available in his hometown
of Blaine. Over the weekend, much of the heaviest snowfall had been in
northwest Washington, with more than a foot falling in Ferndale by
Monday morning. But later Monday, a low pressure system moved in over
Island, Skagit and Snohomish counties, accompanied by an arctic front
that pushed more snow south into Seattle and King County.
North of Seattle in Snohomish County, a total of about 40,000 customers
were left without power, said Snohomish Public Utility District
spokesman Neil Neroutsos. Rural parts of Skagit County, near the town
of Concrete, reported 24 inches of snow Monday. Puget Sound Energy
spokeswoman Dorothy Bracken said crews were working to restore about
100 small outages, each affecting one to seven customers, in Skagit,
Whatcom, Island and Kitsap counties. In Seattle, Qwest Field, the home
of the Seattle Seahawks, turned into a winter wonderland just in time
for their Monday night game against the Green Bay Packers _ no
strangers to harsh winter conditions. Steady snow began falling 20
minutes before kickoff.
In southwestern Washington, a tractor-trailer jackknifed on Interstate
5, causing a 14-car accident with no major injuries, said State Patrol
Sgt. Monica Hunter.
A new storm headed into Washington state Wednesday as the region
shivered in the aftermath of unusually heavy rain and snow that caused
traffic nightmares and power outages. The stormy weather has been
linked to two deaths. Joey Peplinski clears snow from his car in Avon,
CO, Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. More than a foot of snow blanketed the
Colorado Rockies early Tuesday and as much as another foot is expected
by Wednesday. Winter storm warnings were issued for much of the state
into Thursday with up to a foot of new snow possible in the Cascade
Range. One to 6 inches was predicted for the central Puget Sound area,
including Seattle, the National Weather Service said. While much of the
eastern third of the nation basked in readings in the 60s and 50s
Wednesday, overnight temperatures in western Washington plunged into
the low 20s. Two 16-year-old boys were found dead Tuesday in a garage
east of Port Angeles in the Upper Peninsula, apparently the victims of
carbon monoxide poisoning. They apparently were trying to refuel a
portable generator used to supply power during a storm-caused blackout,
said Jim Borte, a spokesman for the Clallam County sheriff's office.
Elsewhere, Colorado was digging out after a storm dropped up to 2 feet
of snow in the mountains Tuesday, replenishing ski resorts but making
mountain travel treacherous. World Cup organizers canceled a men's
downhill practice at the Beaver Creek resort near Vail, saying the
racers _ who can exceed 70 mph _ couldn't see far enough in the heavy
snowfall. They also cited the threat of avalanches. The rare Puget
Sound snow that fell earlier this week turned commutes into nightmares.
Some football fans reported spending eight hours or more getting home
on icy roads after the Seattle Seahawks game, and others simply
abandoned their cars on freeways. One to 3 inches of snow fell in
Seattle, much of it during the Monday evening rush-hour, and as much as
5 or 6 inches in the surrounding suburbs, the weather service said. Up
to 2 feet fell in the Cascade Range foothills, blacking out thousands
of customers.
The first major snowstorm of the season blew across the Plains and
Midwest on Thursday, grounding hundreds of flights, closing schools,
glazing highways and threatening to dump up to a foot of snow on
communities that had basked in balmy weather only days earlier. The
wintry weather spread across an area stretching from Texas and Oklahoma
to Michigan, and a blizzard warning was posted in parts of Oklahoma.
Clay Ender, who works for a heating service company, struggled to get
around in the 3 inches of snow that fell overnight in Lubbock, Texas. A
trip across the city that usually takes 20 minutes stretched to an
hour, he said.
By Thursday, the storm was moving northeast from Oklahoma on the way to
Illinois. It could reach the Northeast sometime this weekend. Sleet,
snow and freezing rain forced the cancellation of 250 flights out of
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Some schools were closed. In
the Texas Panhandle, roads were covered with ice and up to 7 inches of
snow. At Chicago's O'Hare Airport, at least 265 flights scheduled for
Friday morning were canceled. By Thursday afternoon, all but two
departing flights from Lambert Airport in St. Louis had been canceled
for the rest of the day. An Oklahoma man was killed Thursday when his
vehicle skidded out of control on an icy road and hit an oncoming
tractor-trailer, police said. In Springfield, Mo., freezing rain and
sleet knocked out power to 15,000 customers, and the forecast called
for snow and high winds.
Snow, Freezing Rain Moves Into Midwest