Residents began packing up and fleeing rising rivers in western Washington state Wednesday as a new wave of heavy rain swept into a region still reeling from a storm that triggered rescues and road closures a day earlier.
In the Pacific Northwest, an atmospheric river was swelling rivers toward record levels, with major flooding expected in some areas including the Skagit River, a major agricultural valley north of Seattle. In the town of Mount Vernon, officials ordered residents within the river’s floodplain to evacuate.
Earlier in the day, dozens of vehicles were backed up at a sandbag-filling station in the town as residents prepared for what Mayor Peter Donovan described as “what increasingly appears to be a worst-case scenario here.”
The Skykomish River roars by a cabin on Dec. 10, 2025, near Index, Snohomish County, Wash.
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Nick Wagner /The Seattle Times via AP
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a statewide emergency Wednesday, saying, “Lives will be at stake in the coming days.” He estimated that as many as 100,000 Washington residents may soon face evacuation orders.
“We expect rivers to hit historic levels as early as 4 a.m. tomorrow, lasting into Friday morning,” Ferguson wrote on social media.
Ferguson later posted that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s National Weather Prediction Service had predicted 18 major floods and 15 moderate floods in the state.
The National Weather Service warned of the possibility of “catastrophic flooding,” specifically along the Skagit and Snohomish rivers.
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“Landslides are likely in areas of steep terrain within the considerable and catastrophic regions,” the weather service said.
Gent Welsh, adjutant general of the Washington National Guard, said hundreds of Guard members will be sent to help communities.
Chad Walker, right, and Adrienne Higbee help an out-of-town neighbor with their property as the Skykomish River rises on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Index, Snohomish County, Wash. ()
Nick Wagner /The Seattle Times via AP
In the Mount Rainier foothills southeast of Seattle, Pierce County sheriff’s deputies rescued people at an RV park in Orting, including helping one man in a Santa hat wade through waist-deep water. Part of the town was ordered to evacuate over concerns about the Puyallup River’s extremely high levels and upstream levees.
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A landslide blocked part of Interstate 90 east of Seattle, with photos from Eastside Fire & Rescue showing vehicles trapped by tree trunks, branches, mud and standing water, including a car rammed into the metal barrier on the side of the road.
Officials also closed a mountainous section of U.S. 2 due to rocks, trees and mud. The state transportation department said there were no detours available and no estimated time for reopening.
The Skagit River is expected to crest at roughly 47 feet in the mountain town of Concrete early Thursday, and roughly 41 feet in Mount Vernon early Friday.
Those are both “record-setting forecasts by several feet,” Skagit County officials said.
Flooding from the river long plagued Mount Vernon, the largest city in the county with some 35,000 residents. In decades past, residents would form sandbagging brigades when floods threatened, but businesses were often inundated. Flooding in 2003 displaced hundreds of people.
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The city completed a floodwall in 2018 that helps protect the downtown. It passed a major test in 2021, when the river crested near record levels.
But the city is on high alert. The historic river levels expected Friday could top the wall, and some are worried that older levees could fail.
“The concern about that kind of pressure on the levy and dike system is real,” said Ellen Gamson, executive director of the Mount Vernon Downtown Association. “It could potentially be catastrophic.”
Gamson said many business owners were renting tables to place their inventory higher off the floor. Sheena Wilson, who owns a floral shop downtown, said she stacked sandbags by the doors and cleared items off the floor.
“If the water comes in above table height I’ve got bigger problems than my merchandise,” she said.
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Jake Lambly, 45, added sandbags, tested water pumps and moved valuables to the top floor of the home he shares with his 19-year-old son. Lambly said he was concerned about damage in his neighborhood, where people “are just on the cusp of whether or not we can be homeowners.”
“This is my only asset,” he said from his front porch. “I got nothing else.”
Harrison Rademacher, a meteorologist with the weather service in Seattle, described the atmospheric river soaking the region as “a jet stream of moisture” stretching across the Pacific Ocean “with the nozzle pushing right along the coast of Oregon and Washington.”
Authorities in Washington have knocked on doors to warn residents of imminent flooding in certain neighborhoods, and evacuated a mobile home park along the Snohomish River. The city of Snohomish issued an emergency proclamation, while workers in Auburn, south of Seattle, installed temporary flood control barriers along the White River.
In Sumas, a small city along the U.S.-Canada border, a flood siren rang out at city hall and residents were told to leave. The border crossing was also closed to southbound commercial vehicles to leave more room for evacuations, according to the Abbotsford Police Department.
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Climate change has been linked to some intense rainfall. Scientists say that without specific study they cannot directly link a single weather event to climate change, but in general it’s responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods and wildfires.
Another storm system is expected to bring more rain starting Sunday, Rademacher said. “The pattern looks pretty unsettled going up to the holidays.”
Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.
One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.
The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.
All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.
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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.
One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”
The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.
Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.
If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.
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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.
Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.
Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.
The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.
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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.
In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.
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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.
Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.
The disclosures also report gifts, travel, food and lodging that the justices received in 2025. Jackson and Sotomayor were the only two to report gifts. Jackson was given a painting for her chambers valued at $2,500, and Sotomayor reported a trip to Kansas City to watch the opening of a musical based on her children’s book, Just Ask.
In addition, she reported receiving free tickets worth $4,333 while on “a private trip to Puerto Rico.” The tickets were from the record label that represents Bad Bunny, and her trip coincided with the artist’s months-long concert series in San Juan. Sotomayor’s parents were from Puerto Rico, and she has spent much time there over the years.
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The justices also disclosed significant reimbursements for travel throughout 2025. Thomas’ travel, food and lodging expenses were paid for by the Hoover Institution for speaking at a celebration of conservative economist Thomas Sowell.
Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Barrett and Jackson were reimbursed for international travel, where they gave speeches, spoke about their books or taught. Roberts was the only sitting member of the court not to report any gifts or travel reimbursements.
The annual filings also shed some light on the justices’ activities off the bench. Kavanaugh reported that in addition to his duties as a Supreme Court justice, he serves as a coach to multiple D.C.-area Catholic Youth Organization girls’ basketball teams. Coach K, as he is known by his players, wrote the court’s June decision declaring that states can ban transgender women and girl athletes from playing on women’s and girls’ sports teams.
The justices’ salaries are established by law. The chief justice earns the most, at $320,700 per year. The eight associate justices earn $306,600 per year. While that is a lot of money to most Americans, the justices and even their law clerks could earn more the minute they leave their Supreme Court jobs for large law firms.
Roberts was the only member of the court to report investing in individual stocks. Alito in the past has also owned shares of individual stocks, but his report is not due for three months when his extension runs out. For the most part, the justices do not own individual stocks, but do invest in index funds, mutual funds and other such investment programs in order to both make money and limit potential conflicts of interest that would require their recusal from certain cases.
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However — and this is a big however — the financial reporting forms the justices are required to fill out are so unspecific and the reporting ranges for investment earnings are so broad that it is impossible to determine any justice’s overall wealth. In addition, the current value of the justices’ homes isn’t reported. Neither is their spouses’ income, which in the case of the chief justice, for instance, likely far exceeds his take-home pay.
At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.
A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.
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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”
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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.
Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.
“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.
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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.
Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.
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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.
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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.
Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.
“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.
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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”
He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.
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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.
On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.