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UPDATE WITH PHOTOS: Flood watch issued for Palouse River; floods, slides in western Wash.

January 7, 2009, 3:32 pm

For a look at the flooding in western Washington, click HERE.

The National Weather Service in Spokane has issued a flood watch for the Palouse River near Potlatch.

Meteorologist John Livingston said warmer than expected temperatures, wind, and overnight precipitation will push the river near flood stage around 10 a.m. Thursday.

Livingston said the river has the potential to cause minor flooding in Potlatch as well as downstream in the town of Palouse.

“We have enough uncertainty with the conditions we have right now that we are going to go ahead and put out the watch as we continue to monitor the situation,” he said.

“We’re getting into the tough part of it right now. I expect that anything that could potentially happen will happen between now and dawn on Friday when we expect the temperatures to cool down and help things out.”

Whitman County Public Works Director Mark Storey said the county has received several reports of washed out gravel roads, but so far no major paved roadways have been damaged. Storey asked rural residents to be patient while crews work to fight the flood damage.

“I don’t think this will be as bad as 1997, but the Palouse River could make a fool of me,” he said. “The thing is I know rural residents will be inconvenienced by this, but whether there will be any real damage remains to be seen.”

Spokane, already beset by more than 6 feet of snow in the past three weeks, was hit with rain and temperatures in the mid-40s. The weather service issued a flood warning for the area and cautioned that rain-saturated snow would place even more weight on rooftops that could collapse.

Avalanches and the risk of more slides closed Interstate 90, Washington’s principal east-west route, through Snoqualmie Pass, as well as U.S. Highway 2 through Stevens Pass and U.S. 12 through White Pass.

The only road open between the two sides of the state within Washington was winding, two-lane Highway 14 through the Columbia River Gorge.

An avalanche of snow and mud about 100 yards wide damaged some weekend recreation homes in the Hyak area east of Snoqualmie Pass, and state road crews were evacuated from a six-mile stretch along I-90 west of the pass.

More than 25,000 people were told to leave their homes in a flood-endangered valley southeast of Tacoma today as rain and high winds lashed much of Washington state, causing widespread avalanches, mudslides, and high water that could reach record levels.

“This is going to be a memorable flood event,” said Andy Haner, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle.

Fire trucks rolled through Orting, about 10 miles southeast of Tacoma, with loudspeakers advising everyone to leave the town and surrounding valley, home to about 26,000 people. Sandbags were placed around many downtown homes and businesses as the Puyallup River neared record levels.

“They expect the town of Orting to go under water,” Pierce County sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer said, adding that the flooding could be the worst in more than a decade.

-Staff and wire reports


For updates on this story, see Thursday’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News or DNews.com.