Ice, ice, baby
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Caiden Safford does battle with the ice on the sidewalk outside his home in Moses Lake.
MOSES LAKE — The good news is, traditionally the worst part of winter in the Columbia Basin is December and the first half of January. The bad news is, it’s still January and it’s doing what January does. And it’s going to be January for a while.
As of Monday the Columbia Basin seemed to have made a deal with the weather gods – freezing rain Tuesday, but temperatures making the climb above freezing by Wednesday morning. But the weather gods reneged.
Grant County got ice, all right. The Grant County Sheriff’s Office activated the emergency operations center Tuesday night to deal with the storm. The freezing rain dumped enough ice on I-90, along with county and city roads, to create serious traffic snarls. Law enforcement agencies estimated about 40 accidents of varying severity in the overnight hours. “Please drive only if you must,” said a sheriff’s office press release issued Wednesday morning.
While there was ice there wasn’t enough ice to interrupt the power. The Grant County PUD reported it didn’t experience any major outages due to the storm. “We’re definitely monitoring things, and we’ve got crews on standby,” said Chuck Allen, public information officer for the PUD.
But the warmer temperatures didn’t exactly arrive as anticipated. As of noon Wednesday the temperature was hovering around the freezing mark.
“The cold air on the surface is just a little more stubborn than we anticipated,” said Andrew Kalin, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Spokane.
It’ll stick around a few days, too. Temperatures are forecast to “barely sneak above freezing the next few days,” Kalin said, topping out at around 35 degrees. It should be warm enough to melt the ice a little bit, “make it slushy enough that road crews can do their thing.”
More precipitation is forecast as well, with a 20 to 30 percent chance of rain Saturday night and a 60 percent chance of rain Sunday. There’s a slight chance of snow, about 20 percent, Monday. But the major storms associated with this system have passed, Kalin said. “There will be some little systems moving through.”
The NWS 90-day outlook continues to forecast slightly lower temperatures than normal, and slightly higher amounts of precipitation than normal. Hope is on the horizon. “We’re heading closer to spring,” Kalin said.