Snow Halts Airline Flights, Sports Events : Storm Forces Cancellations in Northwest and Mid-Atlantic Coast

More than a foot of snow fell Saturday over parts of the Northwest and the mid-Atlantic Coast, canceling airline flights, closing one highway with an avalanche and shutting down weekend sporting events.

Rivers flooded by five days of rain, meanwhile, slowly receded in Kentucky and Tennessee, where hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes.

Up to 17 inches of snow had fallen on northern North Carolina in Warren and Stokes counties, and 14 inches was reported at historic Williamsburg, Va., the National Weather Service said. Norfolk, Va., had 12 inches, second-highest on record there for February. In the Northwest, Spokane, Wash., had 13 inches of snow.

Power Losses in Carolinas

Sleet and freezing rain coated other parts of Virginia and the Carolinas with ice, and scattered power outages were reported in upstate South Carolina, the weather service said. About 23,000 people lost power in North Carolina, Duke Power Co. officials said.

About a foot of snow caused all airlines operating at Patrick Henry Airport at Newport News, Va., to cancel their flights, stranding about 200 people, airport executive director Peter Daikos said.

Elsewhere in Virginia, Saturday classes at Norfolk State University were canceled, said school spokesman Gerald Tyler, and a number of college basketball games were postponed.

The snow and icy roads in North Carolina arrived just two days after the state basked in 80-degree weather.

“Wrecks are coming in from every which direction . . . “ said Bobby Norville, an emergency communications dispatcher in Pitt County.

Steady snow fell Saturday on the eastern two-thirds of Washington state as the most severe snowstorm to hit the state this winter slowed traffic to a crawl.

U.S. 2 near Stevens Pass, Wash., was closed for about two hours during the night after an avalanche dumped about four feet of snow. Hours earlier, at least 35 cars were involved in a pileup in blinding snow on Interstate 90, about five miles east of North Bend.

In western Tennessee, Tennessee Emergency Management Agency workers were in Obion County assessing the damage caused by flooding there earlier in the week. It did not rain Saturday.

400 Forced From Homes

Nearly 400 people were forced from their homes when the Obion River spilled over its banks in the heart of the Tennessee wheat belt.

The Kentucky River at Frankfort had dropped four feet since cresting Friday at 44.2 feet, 13.2 feet above flood stage.

Streams in southern Ohio also receded after flash flooding.

The first estimates by federal officials pegged Kentucky’s flood damage at $22 million, but the Army’s top engineer, Robert W. Page, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, said Saturday that was “only the tip of the iceberg.”

Five shelters remained open around Kentucky, housing 142 people, said spokesman Don Armstrong of the state Division of Disaster and Emergency Services, and 184 state-maintained roads in 54 counties remained blocked by high water.