Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency after five days of high winds and excessive rainfall. This week's stormy weather produced major flooding, saturated soils, landslides, fallen tree limbs, and flying debris.
Stormy weather Tuesday led to the deaths of at least four people in the Northwest.
According to several news reports, three of the people were from Washington. The fourth was a man from Idaho.
In Oregon, high winds downed trees across the state. That led to temporary closures of Interstate 84, and part of Highway 101 near Tillamook.
More rain is expected in Oregon and Southwest Washington Wednesday evening. The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for the region and said people along the coast and in the Portland metro area should beware of landslides.
“Some places over the last week have gotten over 14 inches of rain," said Gerald Macke, with the National Weather Service in Portland. "There’s a lot of rain that’s hitting in the lower western slopes of the coastal range and then flooding a lot of rivers right along the coast.”
The storms have left hundreds of thousands of Northwest residents without power. Greg Koch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Spokane, said power outages could last for several more days.
“We had a real mixed bag of all kinds of weather (Tuesday)," he said. "We had a lot of wind, with widespread wind gusts in the 50 to 70 mile per hour range, all across eastern Washington and parts of north Idaho."