SEATTLE (AP) — A rare tornado damaged industrial buildings south of Seattle as an unseasonable September storm dumped record amounts of rain and temporarily 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.
There were no injuries at those buildings or at nearby homes, where trees also fell.
A team from the National Weather Service office in Seattle went to the scene and confirmed the tornado from eyewitness accounts, meteorologist Johnny Burg said.
The Weather Service classified the tornado as an EF1, with a maximum wind speed of 110 mph.
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.
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 EF3 in 1972 in Vancouver that killed six people.
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