By Rich McKay and Brendan O’Brien
(Reuters) -A powerful storm clobbered Washington state on Wednesday, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people while disrupting road travel and causing at least two deaths and two injuries.
A woman was killed on Tuesday when a tree fell on a homeless encampment in Lynnwood, north of Seattle, local fire department officials said on social media. A second woman was killed near Seattle when a tree fell on her home, Bellevue fire officials said. Two people were injured when a tree fell on their trailer in Maple Valley, southeast of Seattle.
Schools across western Washington canceled classes or postponed the start of school on Wednesday.
The storm with tropical-storm-force winds of 50 miles (80 km) per hour and gusts around 70 mph (110 kph) felled trees and power lines overnight. It knocked out electricity to more than 600,000 homes and businesses in Washington, southwest Oregon and Northern California, according to Poweroutage.us.
The windstorm and heavy rain also damaged the power system in Canada’s Pacific coast province of British Columbia and cut power to some 225,000 customers Tuesday night, according to provincial electricity provider BC Hydro. By Wednesday morning, about 100,000 customers, mostly on Vancouver Island, remained without power.
An NBC affiliate in Seattle broadcast images of cars smashed by fallen trees and damaged homes.
The Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue service in western Washington urged residents to stay home, with many trees and power lines down.
“Trees are coming down all over the city & falling onto homes,” the fire department of Bellevue, east of Seattle, posted on X. “If you can, go to the lowest floor and stay away from windows. Do not go outside if you can avoid it.”
Winds should die down across the region by midday, but the storm has moved to California and is set to bring extreme rainfall by the end of the week.
“The storm is just beginning,” said Rich Otto, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
“We haven’t gotten a ton of rain yet, just two to three inches (51-76mm) over southwest Oregon and northern California,” Otto said.
‘BOMB CYCLONE’
The storm, called a “bomb cyclone” when the storm rapidly intensifies, is going to stall over Northern California in the next few days, he said. On Friday, rainfall could reach up to 20 inches (508mm) in parts of southwestern Oregon and northern California, Otto said.
A bomb cyclone rapidly intensifies in 24 hours or less when a cold air mass from the polar region collides with warm tropical air in a process that meteorologists call bombogenesis.
The weather service has issued a plethora of warnings and watches across the Pacific Northwest for high winds, flood watches and warnings, including blizzard warnings, from northern Washington to the Sierra Nevada Range.
According to the Washington state’s department of transportation, the storm was making road travel treacherous. Downed trees and weather conditions were slowing traffic across the state, as the department warned motorists to be cautious while on roadways.