Tornado
Confirmed Near Seattle: High Winds Damage Industrial Area
A
reported tornado caused damage to an industrial complex near Seattle
30
September, 2013
SEATTLE
-- A rare tornado damaged industrial buildings south of Seattle as an
early winter storm dumped record amounts of rain and knocked out
power for thousands in the Pacific Northwest.
The
tornado at 7:20 a.m. Monday hit the industrial area of Frederickson,
tearing a hole in the roof of the Northwest Door factory, blowing out
car windows at a nearby Boeing factory, and damaging a building where
sections of a downtown Seattle tunnel project were being assembled.
A
team from the Weather Service office in Seattle went to the scene and
confirmed the tornado from eyewitness accounts, meteorologist Johnny
Burg said.
There
were no injuries.
The
damage, including a jagged 40-by-40-foot hole in the roof at
Northwest Door, stopped work at the factory that makes garage doors.
About 100 workers evacuated.
"It
looked from the inside like a wave going along. You could actually
see the roof flexing," Northwest Door President Jeff Hohman
said.
Work
at the Boeing plant resumed while repairs were underway. There was no
damage to parts or equipment, Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said.
The
tornado blew out the windows of about two dozen cars in the Boeing
parking lot. Several thousand employees work at the Frederickson
site, which makes parts and sections for just about every Boeing
airplane, including the vertical tails for the 777 and 787.
The
tornado also ripped off one-third of the roof and destroyed a metal
garage door at a tent-like structure in Frederickson where a company
called EnCon is welding rebar cages for use in the tunnel project
under downtown Seattle. Project manager Kasandra Paholsky said the
damage forced work to halt but ultimately will not affect the
schedule for digging the Highway 99 tunnel.
Washington
may get a tornado or two every year, but they are usually small. One
of the largest was an F3 in 1972 in Vancouver that killed six people.
Parts
of the Northwest got more rain in a day or two over the weekend than
typically falls in the entire month.
"We
basically had conditions well off shore that were very reminiscent of
late fall-early winter," said Dana Felton, meteorologist at the
National Weather Service office in Seattle.
With
Mondays' precipitation still to be added, it's been the wettest
September on record in Olympia and the second-wettest in Seattle.
Nearly
8 inches fell in Olympia, topping a 1978 record and swamping the
usual 1.7 inches that fall in that time, the National Weather Service
said. Sea-Tac Airport's September total of 5.6 inches came second to
a 1978 record, while downtown Portland saw 6.2 inches - the most
since record-keeping began in 1872.
Puget
Sound Energy had about 12,000 customers out of service late Sunday,
the Bellevue-based utility reported. Seattle City Light reported it
had about 3,200 customers out of service overnight. Portland General
Electric had more than 90,000 customers out of power since the storm
began.
The
storm brought the first significant snow of the season to the
mountains. Forecasters expected 6-to-12 inches by Tuesday morning in
the Olympics and 10-to-20 inches in the Cascades.
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