Record lows or near-records were expected to chill residents overnight Sunday, leaving a thick, hard, slick ice crust of packed snow on many highways and roads across the North Olympic Peninsula.
Conditions Saturday and Sunday caused a power outage east of Sequim to Blyn and Diamond Point.
If two days and nights of snow and numbing lows were not enough, forecasters predict more snowfall tonight and Tuesday.
While National Weather Service reported a low of 14 overnight Saturday and Sunday in Port Angeles to tie a 1959 record low, a state Department of Transportation reported a low of 9 early Sunday at its Indian Valley maintenance yard west of the city.
“If you’ve got single digits there, you’ve got a record,” Jay Neher, chief meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle, said on Sunday.
At the Quillayute Valley Airport near Forks, the temperature plunged to 20 degrees overnight Saturday and Sunday, almost tying 1982’s big chill of 19.
Although it was not declared a record, Olympic National Park at 10:15 a.m. Sunday reported a temperature of -5 degrees at Hurricane Ridge. The road to the ridge was open Sunday.
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The rest of the story appears in the Monday Peninsula Daily News.