SEATTLE — A monster Pacific Northwest storm coated Washington with freezing rain today and brought much of the state to a standstill as the Seattle airport temporarily shut down, tens of thousands of people lost power and hundreds of cars slid off roads a day after the region was hit with a major snowfall.

The storm claimed at least one life — a child whose body was pulled from an Oregon creek where a car was swept away from a grocery store parking lot. Rescuers also searched today for an adult missing in the creek in the Willamette Valley community of Albany, about 70 miles south of Portland.

Freezing rain and ice pellets caused numerous accidents in the Seattle area, where drivers are mostly inexperienced with driving in snow or ice. The last widespread freezing rain in Seattle was in December 1996.