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By GARY CHITTIM / KING 5 News Snoqualmie Pass closure costing millions SEATTLE, Wash. – With three primary east-west routes in Washington and Oregon facing indefinite or periodic shutdowns due to severe winter weather, the trucking industry and all it serve are suffering. As many as 10,000 big rigs cross Snoqualmie Pass every day with vital cargo on board, but with them sitting idle at truck stops, like those near North Bend, it's costing millions of dollars. Ski areas which should be celebrating the big snow are idle since nobody can get there. Operators say if it lasts into the weekend, it could be crippling. Related Content I-90 at Snoqualmie Summit closed until Friday The beneficiary is the air travel industry. Horizon Air says drivers on the east side are heading to the nearest airport, bailing out of their cars and buying tickets right at the counters. Most flights from eastern cities to Seattle are booked solid and Horizon is searching for planes to add to flight schedules. State leaders say they feel the economic pain, but that they can't let it force them into a premature opening. "We know our economy is dependent on it, but we can't open it if it's not safe for travel," said Gov. Chris Gregoire, who declared a state of emergency in 15 Washington counties due to the snow. The state estimates the closure of I-90 costs Washington $20 million a day in lost commerce.
Thursday January 31, 2008, 4:26 PMRecord snowpacks -- especially at low to mid-elevations below 4,000-feet -- could lead to more flooding and landslides, state and federal officials said today. In the past six weeks, said George Taylor of the Oregon Climate Service, the snowpack in the Willamette River drainage rose from 50 percent of average to 167 percent of average. "Of particular note is that low- to mid-elevations have particularly deep snow, generally exceeding 200 percent of average," Taylor said. "These are the areas that will melt first if a large, wet storm reaches us." During these so-called "rain on snow events," heavy rains and warm temperatures combine to create large scale runoff and massive flooding. It happened most recently in February 1996, and also in December 1964.
Damned global warming!
Washington State University in Pullman joined a long list of colleges, universities and school districts in the eastern half of the state that suspended operations and canceled classes because of treacherous driving conditions. Classes were canceled again Friday and the University of Idaho in Moscow, just across the state line, also was closed. Near Fairchild Air Force Base, outside Spokane, a 20-mile section of U.S. 2 was reopened Thursday afternoon after being closed for about 10 hours by blowing and drifting snow, the Transportation Department said. A new storm that passed through the region early Thursday dumped as much as 7 inches of new snow on Spokane, with outlying areas reporting as much as a foot. Occasionally heavy snow continued falling overnight but some respite was predicted by midday Friday. In the southeast corner of the state, heavily traveled U.S. 195 was closed for more than six hours Thursday from south of Pullman, home of WSU, to the Idaho border. Schools in Spokane were closed for a fourth consecutive day Thursday and will not reopen this week because of snowy and icy roads. The snow days in Spokane, which has one of the largest public school systems in the state with 30,000 students, were the first since 1996.
