By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The sun may be shining right now and yesterday’s snow and chill might seem like a bad memory, but it’s not expected to get any better right away around Lewis County.
“We’re looking at cold, cold temperatures for the next two days,” a weather forecaster said this morning about the near term.
Freezing weather and wind last night on top of yesterday’s snowfall kept emergency responders busy, although no serious incidents were reported.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Dennis D’Amico acknowledged Monday was not pretty.
“We had that system come through yesterday that brought quite a bit of snow and Lewis County certainly was one of the hardest hit areas,” D’Amico said. “Not only snow, but colder temperatures than we were expecting.”
Today’s highs won’t be more than the mid to upper 20s and we might break some record lows, he said. The forecast tonight in Chehalis is for 12 degrees, he said.
Tomorrow, the area could see highs around freezing and then drop again down to about 20 degrees, according to D’Amico.
State highway workers didn’t face any significant problems in Lewis County yesterday, other than trees and power lines down across state Route 508 near Bear Canyon Road and a traffic backup on northbound Interstate 5 near Centralia about 8 p.m. because of a semi-truck and cars sliding off the road near the Thurston-Lewis county line, according to a DOT spokesperson.
“Actually we fared much better than the South Sound and Puget Sound area,” DOT spokesperson Heidi Sause said. “The main challenge was the snow on I-5, state Route 505 and state Route 6 yesterday morning, but it did get slick there last night.”
One firefighter described the many collision calls as people in their cars just bumping into each other.
The Napavine area saw several minor spinouts beginning about 9 p.m., according to Lewis County Fire District 5 Firefighter Brad Bozarth.
Crews were called to Rush and Somerville roads where he estimated 10 cars were involved and then to a smaller multiple vehicle collision on Sommerville near Highway 603, Bozarth said.
“It was almost as if the whole county froze at once and we all got busy,” rural Chehalis Firefighter-paramedic Jason Shepherd said.
Sheriff’s deputies parked their regular patrol cars and paired up in four-wheel drives last night. Only two collisions drew troopers around the county, according to a Washington State Patrol spokesperson.
Chehalis Firefighter Kevin Reynolds said they responded to two minor injury pileups at the same time yesterday evening. One on state Route 6 close to town and the other on the northbound off ramp at Mellen Street in Centralia.
In Centralia, firefighters were called to three accidents, all minor, including one at South Gold at Chestnut street where one car bumped into another coming the other way, according to Riverside Fire Authority Capt. Tim Adolphsen.
Chehalis-based Grants Towing said its three drivers were out most of the night.
In South Thurston County, the Tenino-area fire department was kept out about four hours yesterday morning at scene where roughly a quarter mile of power lines came down on 184th Street Southwest near Crowder Road.
Pockets of customers from Pe Ell to Packwood lost power with an estimated 4,000 in the dark at the height of their busyness last night, said Jim Day of Lewis County PUD.
“About 3:30 in the afternoon, everything broke loose,” Day said, keeping some 30 field workers out until about 3 o’clock this morning.
The snow loading up on trees sent limbs onto power lines and some entire trees fell, according to Day. A small number of outages came from connectors switching off from high use, he said.
Bonneville Power lost its service affecting customers in Onalaska, Salkum and Ethel, and PUD had to reroute the connection.
In Randle: “There were some areas on Cline Road we’d get the power on, and another tree would fall and knock it out,” Morton PUD Manager Steve Young said.
Randle-area Fire Chief Jeff Jaques said he woke up to about nine inches of snow on the ground and a temperature of 17 degrees.
The emergency calls started back up this morning, according to area fire departments.
Rochester area firefighters were called this morning to a vehicle into the guard rail on southbound Interstate 5 near the Grand Mound interchange.
Around 5 a.m., a northbound vehicle rolled off Interstate 5 and down a hill near Harrison Avenue in Centralia. Firefighters had to use extrication tools to free the driver, who was taken to the hospital with a bump on his head, according to Riverside Fire Authority Firefighter Paul Bouchard.
About an hour later, in the southbound lanes near Labree Road, a semi-truck tapped a van and the van rolled over and into some water, according to Lewis County Fire District 6 Firefighter-paramedic Shepherd.
The driver was able to self-extricate, Shepherd said.
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Check the National Weather Service’s Forecast Office here for the forecast in your area
Note: a link for the weather forecast website can also always be found on the right-hand sidebar of Lewis County Sirens’ homepage. It’s labeled “Weather forecasts”