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Customers of Puget Sound Energy who are without power for five full days are entitled to a $50 credit on their bill.

Spokeswoman Gretchen Aliabadi (ah-LEE'-ah-BAHD'-ee) says those people should contact customer service. It's likely to add to the expense of the outage which she says is already costing the utility tens of millions of dollars.

As of Monday morning, 53,000 homes and businesses are still without power from last week's snow and ice storms in Western Washington. PSE says major repairs have mostly been made and now it's down to restoring a few customers at a time.

The utility has 280 line crews and a total of about 2,000 people working on repairs. It could take until the middle of the week to get everyone back on line.

The National Weather Service says 20-foot waves and high tides threaten some communities on the Washington coast.

Forecasters say they threaten severe erosion of the jetty protecting La Push and the lower Quileute tribal village during high tied around noon Monday.

During high tide Sunday water covered sidewalks in Westport near the marina. But, City Administrator Randy Lewis told KBKW water didn't appear to get into buildings.

A Sunday morning mudslide, joined by a water main and gas leak, took out what firefighters could only describe as a lot of cubic yards of mud directly below West Lake Sammamish Parkway Southeast.

The major commuting road will be closed -- likely for days -- for local access only between Northeast 2nd Place at Northup and Southeast 26nd Street while City of Bellevue soil engineers work to fix the slide. Mud entered three homes, while another was threatened. Thirty homes lacked water.

Directly below the slide, a garage was filled with mud, and a car, barely visible, sat smashed against the ceiling.

Rick Crinzi, who lives in the 500 block of West Lake Sammamish Parkway Southeast, said he dialed 911 Sunday.

"There was a huge crash, and all of a sudden you could see all the mud come sliding down," he said. "The gas line was flailing around like a snake."

As rain continued to fall Sunday afternoon, Puget Sound Energy was working to turn off the gas to the minor line, which serves two homes. Mike Jackman, deputy director of utilities for the City of Bellevue, said it was too soon to tell whether the water main caused the break or saturated mud from days of snow, rain and sleet were to blame.

"To clean up the slide, there's a lot of work to do," he said. "We're just getting started."

An hour before the National Weather Service's wind advisory went into effect, high winds had already taken down more power lines in the North Bend area, causing a few thousand power outages affecting two local schools.

Andy Wappler, a spokesman for Puget Sound Energy, said Mount Si High School and Snoqualmie Elementary were without power, concerning parents whose children had spent most of the past week out of school.

He called the latest outages fairly small, adding to about 100,000 outages the company was already working to fix.

In addition to the high winds, snow, sleet and rain had saturated the ground, making trees more vulnerable.

For Puget Sound Energy, it's been the storm that won't stay down and the lines that won't stay up.

The storm, which has kept crews in the field continuously for more than five days, just keeps reinventing itself, shifting from snow to sleet to ice to wind -- and keeping some crews working 40-hour shifts.

Flash back to 4 a.m. Thursday morning, when things were looking relatively good. Though 160,000 customers had been out of power after the first heavy punch, crews had managed to whittle that down to just 15,000 customers.

Then the ice storm hit.

By late Thursday, that 15,000 had ballooned to 280,000 without power. PSE called in crews from seven states and British Columbia. With the ice storm causing more outages, some crews stayed in the field for 40 hours before taking a mandatory break.

The crews in the field have different jobs. An assessor might document the damage, followed by a tree crew that removes trees so line crews can come in later and restore the power.

All that takes a massive coordination effort, starting at the Redmond-based emergency operations center and trickling down through regional operations to temporary staging areas set up to provide the workers with food and a place to get their latest instructions.

"We have had crews continuously working since Tuesday of last week," Andy Wappler, a spokesman for the utility, said on Sunday.

The utility currently has 900 people in 250 crews in the field and about a thousand people, from interns to the CEO, working in the office and in the company's emergency operations center and call center, Wappler said.

The utility has been collaborating with the National Weather Service to try to anticipate those areas that might be hardest hit. On Sunday, the weather service gave the utility more bad news: high winds were likely to cause still more outages.

And Wappler, a meteorologist by training, has found himself a jack-of-all-trades as he helps advise the company on where the seemingly never-ending storm will hit next.

Two homes in Bellevue have been evacuated because of a mudslide in the 500 block of West Lake Sammamish Parkway Southeast.

Another two homes were in the path of the mudslide but were vacant, said Bellevue fire officials.

A section of the parkway, from Northeast 2nd Place to Southeast 26th Street, has been closed while repair crews work to fix a broken water main, which is being looked at as the possible cause.

"We don't know if the mudslide caused the water main break or if the water main break caused the mudslide," said Bellevue Utilities Deputy Director Mike Jackman. A small section of a gas line also was ruptured, he said.

No injuries were reported.

Bellevue police and firefighters are on the scene, along with officials from Bellevue Utilities and Puget Sound Energy.

As Puget Sound Energy works to restore power to more than 100,000 customers, another problem is on the way: the National Weather Service is issuing an advisory for high winds that could cause more power outages.

The advisory will be in effect starting at 1 p.m. and continuing to 10 p.m.

King County, Bellevue and areas east could be hit with sustained winds of 20 to 30 mph and gusts of up to 50 mph, said Johnny Burg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

"These winds can snap small branches and cause local power outages," he said. "When we have winds that high, especially with the recent storm, it can happen."

Puget Sound Energy, which has about 46,000 customers without power in King County, is now sending its 250 crews to neighborhoods to restore power to local areas.

Heavy rain this week could bring flooding to southern parts of Western Washington. Burg said updates on which areas might be affected by flooding should be available Monday.

Homeless people were heading back outside Sunday morning as severe weather shelters throughout King County closed their doors.

The 24-hour Issaquah Community Shelter, which had stayed open Saturday night, closed Sunday morning. A shelter at Kent Lutheran Church had closed up Saturday morning after housing about 30 homeless there during some nights of the storm.

A shelter at Auburn's William C. Warren building in the city's Veteran's Memorial Park, run by the Auburn Food Bank, took the morning off after spending the storm caring for homeless. That shelter will reopen at 5 p.m.

Shelter operators said homeless people had been showing up with socks and jackets soaked through.

Where will they go now?

"They're going back into the woods and into cars and couch-surfing," said Linda Stockham, who runs Kent Lutheran's severe weather shelter.

King County was operating some shelters during the day, according to its website. Get a list here.

The YWCA Angeline's Center for Homeless Women and the County Administrative Building, serving women and men respectively, were still open nightly, according to the site. For a full list, click here.

The National Weather Service has issued a high wind warning for parts of Western Washington, as thousands remain without power after a snow and ice storm battered the region.

Forecasters say winds of 40 mph or gusts of up to 60 mph are likely Sunday along the coast and in the San Juan Islands, Whidbey Island, Bellingham and Anacortes.

Puget Sound Energy says crews are working around the clock to restore power to about 119,000 customers in King, Pierce and Thurston counties still in the dark Sunday morning. The Snohomish Public Utility District says about 4,000 customers are still without power.

In Oregon, snow is forecast for the Hood River valley and the Columbia Gorge. Rain may cause more flooding in some rivers.

The Coast Guard is closing several river bars in Washington and Oregon and to all vessels because of hazardous conditions Sunday.

Coast Guard officials in Seattle and Astoria, Ore., are closing the bars at Quillayute (KWIL-uh-yoot) River in Washington, as well as Siuslaw River and Depoe Bay in Oregon.

The Coast Guard says it will re-open the waterways as soon as offshore weather improves.

Associated Press

LAKEWOOD, Pierce County - A fire official says a heavy load of snow and ice caused the roof to collapse at a Lakewood business that produces and delivers -- ice.

West Pierce Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Hallie McCurdy said three people were in the Allied Ice building Friday afternoon when they heard loud noises. They got out safely just before the roof gave way.

She said the building was destroyed but she had no immediate damage estimate.

Allied Ice didn't immediately return a call for comment.

From staff reporter Carol M. Ostrom

Seattle Public Schools students got a snow break, but now at least one day is being taken back: Classes will be held next Friday, Jan. 27, to help make up for one of the school days canceled because of snow.

Originally, the day was scheduled as a day off for students so staff could work on professional development.

The District said it would make a determination next week about making up the other two snow days, which would likely come at the end of the year. The staff professional-development day will be rescheduled, the school district said.

"It is important to get our students back in the classroom next week," said Dr. Susan Enfield, Interim Superintendent. "We know some families may have made out-of-town plans for next Friday, and we apologize for any inconvenience this causes."

There will still be a three-hour early dismissal on Tuesday, because of a scheduled furlough day for teachers and staff represented by the Seattle Education Association (SEA). That day cannot be used as a snow make-up day.

From staff reporter Carol M. Ostrom

Three children and an adult from Kent's Easthill area who may have suffered carbon-monoxide poisoning Friday night were taken to the hospital by Kent firefighters. They were responding to a 911 call from the family, whose members complained of dizziness, headaches and nausea after attempting to use a small charcoal barbecue indoors to heat their house.

The Kent Fire Department said residents should never bring barbecues or generators into or near homes, because they throw off carbon monoxide, a clear, odorless gas that blocks the body's ability to absorb oxygen. Carbon monoxide poisoning is sometimes fatal.

Here is a multilingual warning about carbon monoxide poisoning.

If anyone experiences dizziness, headaches and nausea, and carbon monoxide poisoning is suspected, the Fire Department said, call 911 immediately and leave the residence.

Kent Firefighters treated the family at the scene and took them to a local hospital for further evaluation, the Department said.

From staff reporter Jennifer Sullivan

CARNATON -- Adria Covey Vondra and a group of her neighbors stood shivering inside a barn Friday watching their kids jump on risers, jump rope and run around while playing a game of Simon Says. The moms couldn't wait for the one-hour kids session at the Sno Valley CrossFit gym to be over so they could get to working out.

Some parts of Carnation have been without power for days. Vondra and her friends, residents of the River's Edge subdivision, lost their power on Friday morning. It was chilly inside the gym, a converted barn on Northeast Tolt Hill Road, but Vondra didn't care. She said she would get warm enough while doing her CrossFit workout.

Tess Linder, a trainer at the gym, watched her 5-year-old twin daughters run around and guided other kids through their workout session. Linder said people in the neighborhood have cabin fever. She even set up a makeshift CrossFit studio in a shed on her property, and five people showed up earlier in the week for a workout. She said that opening the gym on Friday was a chance for everyone "to burn off the stir crazies."

After nearly a week without school, Vondra said, her three sons and the nearly 40 kids in their neighborhood were in meltdown by Friday. The teasing and crankiness has become incessant. Linder was hopeful the Friday workout on would help everyone, especially the kids.

"I don't know if it burns it off or winds them up, but they'll go to bed earlier," she joked.

Dana McCabe, who lives in Carnation, said having a workout, even if it's in the cold, is important for her "psychologically." Vondra quickly added that she would "go insane without exercise."

It was cold in the gym, but all of the families said they didn't worry about the power being out at home because they all have generators. Vondra said the important thing was finding a gas station where she could purchase fuel for the generator. She said the gas station in Carnation was sold out by midday Friday.

"The generator is a lifesaver," said Jennifer Gehring, who was at the gym with her daughter.

From staff reporter Carol M. Ostrom

Telephone network outages -- both landline and cellular -- caused by snow, ice and power failures have been reported throughout King County.

Emergency-management officials have issued advice to people who are unable to get through to 911: If only the home phone is down, use a cellphone. If both are unavailable, try to call from another area, go to the nearest fire station, or use a phone in a public place.

The 911 centers cannot receive text messages.

It's Friday, and a few weather-related cancellations of events and venues have been announced. Meanwhile, other shows -- like the equine extravaganza "Cavalia" -- are opening or re-opening tonight. Refresh this post throughout the day for updates.

OPEN

ArtsWest: The performance of the play "All Through the Night" will go on Friday night. Go here for tickets and info.

"Cavalia." After postponing its local premiere for two days, "Cavalia" will canter into King County's Marymoor Park, in Redmond, Friday night. Here are details for ticket-holders, straight from the presenter: "All purchased tickets for Wednesday evening's performance have been automatically transferred to a new show (...) Sunday, January 22 at 7 p.m. If you purchased tickets or were confirmed yesterday for Friday's show, we will see you this evening. Doors open at 6 p.m., curtain at 8 p.m."

Jazz Alley. The Alley is back in business, with one show Friday night instead of its usual two. Starting at 7:30 p.m., it'll be a longer-than-customary set (90 minutes), featuring Jeff Lorber. Jazz Alley website is here.

Pacific Science Center. It reopens at 11:30 today. PacSci urges you to visit its butterfly house, where it is "a balmy 80 degrees." Info here.

Seattle Art Museum. All three locations are re-opening today -- downtown, Volunteer Park and the Olympic Sculpture Park. Info is here.

Village Theatre: Friday night's performance of "The Odd Couple" will go on at 8 p.m. Show details here.

CLOSED

Eastside Jazz Club. A planned Friday-night concert has been canceled. Info here.

Frye Art Museum: It's closed Friday. Go to the Frye's website for snow closure updates.

The Neptune. Kyle Cease's Friday night appearance has been moved to Friday, Feb. 10. All previously purchased tickets will be honored on the new dates. For info, go to Seattle Theatre Group's website.

Mara Gearman and Friends: The performance with Gearman, Paul Taub and others planned at Cornish on Friday night is canceled. Ticket buyers will be contacted; questions before then can be directed to 206-726-5030.

Neumos. The Youth Lagoon show, earlier rescheduled from Jan. 19 to Jan. 23, has now been canceled. See Neumos' site for info.

Whidbey Island Center for the Arts: All weekend workshops and performances are canceled. For updates, go here.

UPDATE: Highway 410 to Crystal Mountain, has reopened, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.

From staff reporter Carol M. Ostrom

The lifts were running, the beer was flowing, but the road leaving Crystal Mountain ski area closed suddenly Wednesday night, trapping about 200 skiers, workers and others.

And they've been there ever since, unable to leave and, for a time, unable to even call or email out .

"The lucky few who are 'stranded,' quote unquote, had the place to themselves," said Tiana Enger, Crystal Mountain spokeswoman. She said the resort discounted hotel rooms for the group, and there were plenty of rooms left.

Most skiers had left the area well before trees blocked the road and cut off electricity.

Crystal has a generator for power, including power to the lifts, Enger said. But Thursday, falling trees wiped out electricity to the cellular tower, and cell service and email went down until about 5 p.m. Thursday, she said.

She said she had heard there were more than 100 trees over the road.

Road crews promised the road would be open by 4:30 Friday.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn refused to give the city a grade for its response to the snowstorm this week.

This is after former Mayor Greg Nickels' gave the city a "B" for Seattle's response to a 2008 storm, when many criticized the city's lack of organization.

What grade would you give the city's response this week?

About 50,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled into Port Gardner Bay in Everett early this morning because of power surges.

According to a news release from the city of Everett, power surges at about 3 a.m. Friday morning caused one of Everett's pumping stations at 3520 Pigeon Creek Rd. to stop pumping sewage for about an hour.

City crews fixed the station by 4 a.m. and are taking water quality samples and posting signs to let people know about the spill.

Update: All lanes of the Tacoma Narrows Bridges have reopened, the Washington Sate Patrol says.

Update: The eastbound lanes of the Tacoma Narrows Bridges have opened, the Washington Sate Patrol says.

Update: The center lanes of the Tacoma Narrows Bridges have opened, the Washington Sate Patrol says.

Also: The state Ferry Service says there's a two-hour wait at the Bremerton ferry terminal because of traffic from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge closure. The wait at Fauntleroy is also two hours, and the wait at the Vashon terminal is 90 minutes.

Update: after a 5 p.m. inspection, state officials say the Tacoma Narrows Bridges will stay closed at least one more hour.

Both bridges are closed because large chunks of ice are falling onto the bridge decks and posing a risk to motorists, says the Washington State Patrol.

Ice was 2 inches thick, state officials said after the closure started at noon.

The towers of both the 1950 and 2007 suspension bridges rise about 500 feet above Puget Sound, and ice could easily slough off the massive, cylindrical cables that ascend to the towers.

According to the state Department of Transportation, the last time the steel-towered 1950 bridge was closed by ice was 1996 -- and both bridges were closed in 2008 during a windstorm that could have toppled trucks or knocked cars out of their lanes.

Of course, in 1940 the original bridge across the Tacoma Narrows, "Galloping Gertie," twisted and fell in a windstorm, because of aerodynamic lift and an excessively narrow deck width.

The State Patrol says it will conduct an assessment before deciding when to reopen the bridges.

They were obscured by fog mid-day, but KING television earlier photographed a thick ice layer on the curving suspension cables, as seen from a helicopter. And KIRO television, reporting from a roadblock on the Tacoma shore, reported that ice caused loud booms as it struck the roadbed.

The state DOT has posted some dramatic pictures of snow-related road closures on Flickr.

More weather-related road updates from the state are here. The State Patrol is issuing updates on Twitter.

Thursday's ice storm left downed trees across power lines, roads, sidewalks and park entrances. That left thousands without power, especially south and east of Seattle.

The snow is finally melting, and while Puget Sound Energy is working on getting the power back on, city crews are working around the clock to clear roadways.

"When I drove in this morning it was like, remember the neutron bomb that would only kill people, but not buildings? It looked like a tree neutron bomb had gone off," said Federal Way spokesman Chris Carrel.

He also described the city this way: "We're feeling like ground zero for the ice bomb."

In response, Carrel said the city is putting half its resources into removing snow and ice and the other half into removing downed trees. About a third of the homes and businesses in Federal Way are without power, he said.

Other city crews were doing the same type of work.

"They'll be working through the weekend" to make roads passable, said John Hodgson, city administrator in Kent.

In Renton, spokeswoman Preeti Shridhar said city workers need people to move their cars off the street as they thaw out to avoid getting buried in slush as workers clear arterials.

All the cities have emergency warming shelters open both during the day and overnight.

"Even here at City Hall, if there's somebody who doesn't have power, a colleague will say, 'come stay at my house,'" said Shridhar. "It's something we're all doing as a community."

This sledder was one of about 50 people who gathered January 19, 2012 and took over North 65th Street between Phinney Avenue and 3rd Avenue Northwest in Seattle, which was closed due to icy conditions. Video by Seattle Times staff reporter Katherine Long.

In this video shot by Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's 12-year-old son, Cian, the mayor shows residents how to clean out a storm drain.

City officials are encouraging residents to clear the storm drains in their neighborhoods, if they can do so safely. That way, the melting snow is less likely to cause flooding.

It was no accident that Seattle drivers woke up Friday morning to bare arterial streets, including a nearly slush-free Aurora Bridge.

The 167-foot high span was street maintenance director Steve Pratt's main worry overnight -- because the air was still freezing, and cooled the steel bridge from beneath. In addition to that crossing, he put extra emphasis on clearing snow-covered Martin Luther King Jr. Way South, along with 15th Avenue Northwest and 15th Avenue Northeast, among others. The West Seattle Bridge route and Alaskan Way Viaduct already were in great shape and stayed that way.

The city's focus is now on clearing as many of its 80,000 storm drains as possible to prevent flooding, said spokesman Rick Sheridan. Washington state DOT warns drivers to avoid high speeds where standing water can cause cars to hydroplane.

As the melt begins Friday, many streets and sidewalks are still icy. If a road isn't on a transit route, it generally wasn't plowed or salted. A clear example is around Greenlake, where Winona Avenue North and West Greenlake Avenue North are still packed ice while North 80th Street is down to only a little slush.

Because the chill persisted an extra day and a half longer than forecast, the city spent another $150,000 to $200,000 for its clearing work, plus $15,000 to $20,000 for extra help, on top of the $500,000 or so for the initial snow response, Pratt said in an interview Thursday evening.

At 2 p.m. Thursday, Pratt called on MidMountain Contractors of Kirkland, a frequent builder of major road projects in Seattle, to dispatch three road graders to add to the city's own fleet of 30 vehicles. Two of them in tandem cleared Fairview Avenue North. Pratt planned to call MidMountain earlier if Seattle got the 15 inches of snow originally forecast, but only six inches fell, so he delayed doing so until freezing rain showed up Thursday.

Pratt said that generally, the city clearing efforts went well, given the changing conditions. Boren Avenue near the hospitals was de-iced and easily drivable as early as Wednesday night.

It appears the only noteworthy lapse was Wednesday morning, when transit buses had to creep down an unplowed hill on Third Avenue year Yesler Way -- causing delays that spread to outlying areas -- before city plows reached that block about 10 a.m.

Seattle applied so much salt that stockpiles nearly ran out at all three maintenance yards, and the city called public utilities truck drivers to fetch more from a vendor near the Duwamish River. The vendor was unable to deliver the pinkish Canadian salt fast enough to both Washington state DOT and Seattle, said Pratt.

Mayor Mike McGinn, whose win came in part because of his predecessor fumbling a 2008 ice storm, has boosted the winter road-response budget, to $1.14 million for 2012. Pratt said this week's truckers are restocking the depleted salt piles, of some 2,000 tons, to be ready for the next snow event.

After the arrival of the first big snow this season, The Seattle Times asks residents, "Are Seattleites snow wimps?"

This question was initially posed by the L.A. Times and created plenty of local response, prompting Sportspress Northwest's Art Thiel to declare: "Critics of Seattle in snow: Shut the hell up" and many comments on seattletimes.com.

Kris Olsen, spokeswoman for WSDOT, said there are few problems on main commute routes like Interstate 5, Interstate 405, Interstate 90, Highway 2 and Highway 520 this morning.

While the snow is mostly gone on most of the roads, today's concern for transportation officials is slush and standing water.

"The biggest thing overall is we're seeing more rainfall and the temperatures are rising so we're seeing more slush on the roadway," Olsen said.

"We're worried about standing water as the day goes on. Drivers need to be aware of that. You can slide or hydroplane in standing water," Olsen said. "Just because it seems we're on the upswing, we're not out of the woods."

It's raining, at least in downtown Seattle this morning, and the temperature is finally above freezing.

The National Weather Service says in it's forecast discussion early this morning that the rain is expected to continue through today and into tomorrow and temperatures are expected to warm back to near normal.

This warmer and wet weather could continue into Sunday and next week.

Even in areas hit hardest by the storm south of the Seattle area are warming.

The mercury reached 34 degrees in Chehalis early this morning, according to the Weather Service discussion report. And many other areas which have been in a bit of a deep freeze were within a degree or two of freezing.

A fuller weather story will be available soon.