Thousands still without power

SEATTLE – Strong winds descended on the storm-weary Pacific Northwest and thousands of people remained without power Saturday after a winter storm left a tangle of fallen trees and damaged power lines.

About 195,000 customers remained without electricity, reported Puget Sound Energy, one of the region’s largest utilities. That was down from a peak of more than 260,000 customers.

Wind gusts close to 50 mph arrived in much of the region, which could combine with the remaining snow to bring down more trees. Four snowmobilers were rescued from near-whiteout conditions in Todd Lake, west of Bend, Ore.

“It’s a recipe for more down branches and potential power outages,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis D’Amico. “The good news is that we’ve had above-freezing temperatures for over 24 hours. We’re on our way to melting the snow.”

Elsewhere in Oregon, worries about flooding and high winds subsided Saturday.

Highways along the coast were closed for several hours as high water crept over roadways, but warnings of potential flooding in Benton County proved unfounded.

In Washington, concerns over flooding also abated. The weather service issued flood advisories for only urban areas and creeks. They were, however, keeping an eye on the Skokomish River in Mason County, a flood-prone river, D’Amico said.

Windy conditions will continue into today, D’Amico said.

Olympia remained the most affected city, with close to 24,000 customers without power, Puget Sound Energy said.

The storm was blamed for three deaths. A mother and her 1-year-old son died after torrential rain on Wednesday swept away a car from an Albany, Ore., grocery store parking lot. An elderly man was killed Thursday by a falling tree as he was backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a shed near Seattle.

On Washington’s Mount Rainier, conditions improved enough on Saturday to allow a team of 26 rescuers to search for two campers and two climbers missing since earlier in the week.