SEATTLE -- Howling windstorms and heavy rains left at least four people dead and more than 1 million homes and businesses without power across Western Washington early Friday.

One woman died after being trapped in the flooded basement of her home, while falling trees killed three others in the worst storm to hit the state in nearly 13 years.

The Evergreen Point floating bridge across Lake Washington east of Seattle remained closed early Friday and numerous other highways were blocked because of high water or windblown trees. The Hood Canal floating bridge and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge were reopened early Friday after being closed Thursday evening.

Video: 520 Bridge Damaged In Storm

"It hit right when we thought it would -- in the middle of the night," said KIRO 7 Eyewitness News meteorologist Rick VanCise, of perhaps the most powerful storm in decades.

Hundreds of schools are closed for the day. Get the latest school closures here.

Video from Chopper 7 showed dozens of trees down in West Seattle Friday, including one uprooted right on the busy California Avenue along with a light pole. A few blocks away, a 90-foot tree crashed down on Fauntleroy Avenue, another main thoroughfare.

It was the worst windstorm to hit the state since one on Jan. 20, 1993, that left five people dead, destroyed at least 79 homes and badly damaged 581 others, cut electricity to 750,000 utility customers in the Seattle area and caused about $130 million in damage, said Clifford F. Mass, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.

About 50 residents of Sunrise Assisted Living of Edmonds were evacuated after a tree came crashed through the third floor about 2 a.m., knocking out the fire main and flooding the building, Snohomish County emergency management officials said.

Residents were sent to other facilities operated by Sunrise in the area, many to one in Snohomish where employees were working through a power outage. No injuries were reported.

Hazardous material shipments were prohibited on Interstate 5 through Seattle and on some other major routes because of power outages, and one of the concourses and the south satellite terminal at the airport were without electricity. A second concourse was evacuated after a window blew out.

Winds gusted to a record 69 mph about 1 a.m. at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, breaking the old mark of 65 mph set in 1993.

A number of flights were canceled, including all American Airlines service through the morning hours. Some were canceled because planes that normally would have been used Friday morning were unable to land Thursday night. Airport spokesman Robert Parker said he didn't know how many flights were affected.

Video: Some Flights Canceled At Sea-Tac

Seattle public schools and numerous suburban and outlying school districts with more than 300,000 students were closed Friday, as was The Evergreen State College in Olympia.

In Seattle, firefighters cut a hole in the floor to pull Kathryn Fleming, 41, out of her flooded windowless basement after neighbors heard her screaming that she was trapped, but she was pronounced dead after being taken to Harborview Medical Center.

"Somehow, the door shut, and she couldn't open the door because of the water pressure," Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said.

In Grays Harbor County, a 28-year-old man was killed around midnight when the top of a tree snapped off, crashing into his home in the Brookside Trailer Court in McCleary, 18 miles west of Olympia.

The 40-foot section of the tree crushed the man, who has not been identified, while he slept, Chief Ron Pittman of the McCleary Fire Department, told The World newspaper in Aberdeen.

"The tree came down and flattened every down to the floor. It just came right down on him," Pittman said.

In Pierce County, Harold J. Fox, 47, of Eatonville, was killed Thursday when a tree fell on his vehicle on State Route 7 near Roy, the Washington State Patrol said, and a woman died and her husband was critically injured when a tree fell on their pickup truck after they stopped because of fallen trees southeast of McKenna.

The Seattle Times reported a reduced press run of 13,000 editions because of the storm. Normal weekday circulation is more than 210,000.

About 700,000 customers of Puget Sound Energy, the state's largest private utility, were without power early Friday and about three-fourths of the circuits were down in the company's nine-county service area, spokesman Roger Thompson said.

Other outages affected about 171,000 customers in Seattle, 120,000 in the Snohomish County Public Utility District north of the city, 70,000 to 80,000 to the south in Tacoma and 22,000 in the Grays Harbor PUD on the coast.

There was no estimate of how long it would take to restore all service, but Neil Neroutsos of the Snohomish PUD noted that repair crews were busy for more than a week after the Inauguration Day storm of 1993.

The hardest hit area was King County, which includes Seattle, where drenching rain accompanied the first wallop as the storm hit Thursday afternoon, slowing commuters to a crawl. The winds picked up again around midnight.

"That second one is when we saw the greatest number of outages, after midnight," said Dorothy Bracken, a Puget Sound Energy spokeswoman.

Repair crews were waiting for the winds to subside after daybreak before beginning to assess the damage and restoring power, and some are likely to be in the dark for three she said.

"They've been defeated in doing that because of the continued strong winds ... they never died down," she said. "It's just not safe."

Puget Sound Energy already had 50 to 60 two- and four-person repair crews from areas as far away as California and Nevada for a total of more than 180 crews primed to begin work following an earlier, less damaging wave of storms that hit Wednesday.

Outages from the earlier storm were all fixed before the one began Thursday, and the extra crews were kept rather than sent home, Bracken said.

Even with the outside help, though, some customers won't have their lights back on for days, he said.

Some of the outages were caused by lightning, an unusual circumstance in the Puget Sound region.

As the storm system passed over the region, "we've had some embedded thunderstorms that dropped impressive amounts of water," said Dennis D'Amico, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Winds were clocked at 90 mph near Westport on the coast, in the 80s along the Strait of Juan de Fuca leading inland toward Seattle, 74 mph at the Hood Canal floating bridge, which links the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas and 63 mph at the Evergreen Point floating bridge, one of two linking Seattle with the suburbs east of Lake Washington.

Rain drenched Qwest Field in Seattle shortly before the NFL game between the Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers, leaving standing water on the field. About half an hour before kickoff, a power surge briefly knocked out electricity to the large video screens at each ends of the stadium.

Nearly an inch of rain fell in one hour at the weather service's north Seattle office. A record rainfall of 2.17 inches was set in Seattle for the date, breaking the old record of 1.24 inches on Dec. 14, 2002.

In the 24 hours ending at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, the Weather Service said the Mason County city of Shelton recorded 2.19 inches of rain, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport received 1.09 inches, Olympia had 1.53 inches, Hoquiam on the coast had 1.83 inches, and Maple Falls in the Cascade foothills east of Bellingham had 1.46 inches.