SPOKANE, Wash.– Heavy, wet snow was falling as midnight struck on November 19, 1996, 29 years ago today.
Records from the National Weather Service showed that by 10 a.m., the snow had turned to rain. Unlike many times before and since that day, this rain froze instantly on anything it touched.
It was a perfect storm. It approached from the southwest at just the right angle to keep winds out of the northeast and temperatures below freezing throughout the day. High above, however, a mile-high shaft of warm tropical air was dumping rain, not snow, over that frozen ground. It remains the worst freezing rain event in this region’s history.
Everything was encrusted with close to an inch of ice by the time the day was over. This added hundreds, maybe even thousands of pounds of weight to trees and power line infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power as lines collapsed and trees and poles snapped under the strain. One Spokane man in an interview with KXLY described it as “cannons going off up in the hills.” Some people were without power after the storm until December.
MORE: KXLY reporting on the storm as it happened in 1996
MORE: Our coverage of the 25-year anniversary of the storm
Ice storms remain a risk in the Inland Northwest, but a storm as severe as Ice Storm ’96 is exceptionally rare.
This anniversary and the recently passed anniversary of the 2015 windstorm on Monday are good reminders that November is not a month to mess with when it comes to our weather.
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