Chipotle Woes & Snowfall

Chipotle Woes & Snowfall

Chipotle Woes & Snowfall. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

22 cases of E.coli have prompted 43 Chipotle stores in Oregon and Washington to temporarily close. No deaths have been reported but eight people have been hospitalized. A spokesperson for Chipotle says that while only eight locations are potentially linked to the illnesses the decision was made to close all 43 restaurants out of an abundance of caution. This isn't the first time an outbreak has been reported by Chipotle. Over the summer an outbreak of salmonella was tied to Chipotle restaurants in Minnesota. Health officials says the number of cases linked to the E. coli may increase during the week.

A weekend storm has finally brought some much needed moisture to the region including some snow in the mountains. But heavy rains also brought flood warnings to some areas. The National Weather Service said 4 1/4 inches of rain fell over the Mount Rainier area in a 24-hour period. Scott Pattee, Water Supply Specialist with the WA Snow Survey Office says it's a start.

PATTEE: It's early yet so you know, we're on our way. We did get quite a bit of rain. The last I saw was several inches, there was more than several inches, I believe like up in the Cascades up to like 10-12 inches of rain we got. Even if we had below normal snowpack this year it's still going to be probably quite a bit better than it was last year.

Harts Pass in Washington did get about 7 inches of new snow over the weekend but that's still behind normal.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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