Weather

James McMartin of Spokane talks to Washington State Patrol officers after the truck he was driving jackknifed Monday in snowy conditions on Highway 195 about eight miles south of Spokane. Photo by Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review

Downhill delight The season's first snowfall brought out the sleds for Jessica English, front, Melanie Piperek, middle, and Amanda Hess as they scoot their way down the hill at Manito Park on Saturday morning. Boxie, a blacklab, playfully nips at Piperek's boot. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

Rescue workers check a car that rolled on I-90 Saturday west of Coeur d'Alene. The occupants were unhurt. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

Rescue workers check a rolled car Saturday on I-90 west of Coeur d'Alene. The occupants were shaken but unhurt. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

All week long forecasters pondered the prospect of a big snowstorm this weekend. Some of the half-dozen computer models they use to write forecasts called for snow, even as late as Friday. Other computer models were forecasting milder conditions.

Torrential rains pounded Hawaii again Friday, causing flooding and scattered power outages as authorities used dogs to make sure no one was buried in mudslides. Rain has fallen steadily since Nov. 5 but worsened late this week as about 30 people were evacuated briefly on Oahu, home to Honolulu. Twenty-one inches of rain has fallen on parts of Oahu this month, 17 inches above normal.

Wine-grape growers say they need a mild winter to enable their vineyards to recover from devastating damage suffered in last February's extended subzero freeze. "The wineries, I don't think, will be able to make it in another year like this one," said Maurice Balcom, co-owner of Balcom & Moe, a winery in Pasco. "Or some of the vineyards. Most of the vineyards are just squeaking by as it is."

Heavy rains unleashed mudslides in a remote port town, killing up to 40 people, Haitian radio stations reported Wednesday. Radio Haiti Inter and Radio Vision 2000 said the weekend storms also sank six boats off Baie de Henne, a remote town on Haiti's northern peninsula about 100 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince.

Tap water flowed freely, highways were reopened and life took on a semblance of normalcy Wednesday as bright sunshine returned to parts of New England ravaged by some of the worst floods on record. Damage estimates after two days of heavy rains approached $100 million in Massachusetts, and in Maine, where the storm dumped 18 inches in some communities, a preliminary estimate set damage at $10 million.

The surge of snow dumped on Inland Northwest mountains this past week awakened snowboarders and skiers. But don't break out the ski wax just yet. Mother Nature, it seems, has a habit of teasing local skiers with early-season snowfalls.

A powerful nor'easter that pounded New England over the weekend and into Monday flooded basements and subway stations, swamped roads and broke rainfall records. Two deaths were blamed on the storm. In Peabody, Mass., water up to 4 feet deep swirled through the streets, submerging stranded cars and flowing into stores.

Hurricane Lili tore off roofs, swamped banana farms and disrupted communications across the Bahamas on Saturday, a day after battering Cuba's crucial sugar and coffee crops. But the damage was scattered, and no serious injuries were reported.

A week of pounding rain has killed at least 25 people and left thousands homeless in two southern states, an official said Saturday. The weather office was predicting another two days of rain along coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh.

Leaving eight people dead in its wake across Central America, Hurricane Lili closed in on Cuba with 118 mph winds Thursday and unloaded rain on already saturated South Florida. News reports out of Cuba said 28,000 residents had been evacuated from low-lying central and western coastal areas and 100,000 students were sent home. Cuba also said it was ready to evacuate 86,000 people in the Havana area.

Tropical Storm Josephine never quite made it to hurricane status, but still managed to leave behind a waterlogged and windswept mess as it raced up the East Coast on Tuesday. Gale warnings were posted as far north as New England as the storm - large and fast-moving but not as powerful as some had forecast - brought heavy rain and gusty winds across a wide area.

Tropical storm Josephine began lashing Florida's Gulf Coast on Monday night with 70 mph winds and high surf, spawning tornadoes and dumping up to 5 inches of rain across the state. Pushing a storm surge of 6 to 9 feet at the peak of high tide over swampy, low-lying areas, the storm's center was expected to strike land at midnight near this remote fishing village about 30 miles south of Tallahassee.

The most savage typhoon to batter China's Hainan Island in a decade left at least 38 people dead and 96 missing, the official China Daily reported today. Typhoon Willie dumped more than 15 inches of rain on some parts of the island, which is a province off the southern Chinese mainland, over the weekend, according to the newspaper.

Summer, which officially ends Sunday, will no doubt be remembered as a hot one.

Hurricane Hortense weakened to a tropical storm Sunday after roaring into Nova Scotia Saturday night with 100-mph winds that peeled roofs from buildings, flooded streets and left tens of thousands without power. Hortense was the first hurricane to hit the region since Blanche in 1975. Last week, Hortense killed 20 people in Puerto Rico and five in the Dominican Republic.