WA officials urge preparation for next round of heavy rain following outages, downed trees

Well, public utility crews are preparing for the next round of heavy rain after tens of thousands of people lost power Saturday night. FOX 13's Taylor Wrinkle has more on how to prepare for the next forecasted atmospheric river. Taylor, good morning. Yeah, good morning, Aaron. So we came out here to Renton. We wanted to check out the Cedar River this morning because if you guys remember last December during those historic floods that Washington saw, this river swelled up and flooded a lot of historic buildings down here in downtown Renton. NOAA reports that the Cedar River is doing fine this morning. It looks normal. It actually looks a little low. Out of the tens of thousands who lost power over the weekend, 700 are still alive. Still in the dark this morning, according to Puget Sound Energy. Eastside Fire and Rescue says this weekend we saw one of the first wind advisories of the season. Mercer Island took a hit. Listen to this. We had a lot of trees down, water on the roadways. We just want to make sure we remind people, never drive over power lines. I know I see it after every storm we have, but the important thing to remember is those lines could be active and could hit your undercarriage while you drive over them. So we just want people to remember to stay at least two power poles back from where where the line is, and to call that in and have it handled professionally. Good advice to follow there. We also saw flooding along Washington's coast and Westport, the Olympic Peninsula. Saw some damaged trees are blocking main roads there. And ahead of the next round, they want to make sure that you are prepared for this. So have your extra blankets ready. Charge your batteries. If you're using a backup generator, keep it outside and away from the windows and doors of your home. And also take a look at your storm drains. If it looks like this in front of your house or business, you're going to want to rake those leaves away. And Washington storm drain cleaning is handled through community maintenance, which sometimes means it's on you at home watching this right now. Washington storm water says to remove the leaves and the garbage, the rain. Carries into the storm drains but if the drain is covered with standing water or right near a really busy street report it. Don't try to to fix it yourself. You can report drainage problems through your county. King County has a drainage assistance portal. We're going to have that linked up on our website, fox13seattle.com. In the meantime, we have reached out to Puget Sound Energy to ask about how they are kind of prepping the grid ahead of those storms we're expecting later on this week. We'll let you know when we hear back. For now, reporting live in Renton, I'm Taylor Winkle, Fox 13 News.