Strong winds in western Washington leave thousands in the dark

A blustery weekend in western Washington has resulted in thousands of homes and businesses losing electrical power.

Officials in Snohomish County say they were hit hard by high winds, with close to 40,000 customers losing power overnight.

Puget Sound Energy was also dealing with outages from Whatcom County, to Whidbey Island and the Kitsap Peninsula.

Clallam County was also heavily impacted.

Snohomish County PUD crews and their support staff worked through the night in an effort to bring the lights back on for those who lost power.

Some of the most heavily-impacted areas included Echo Lake, Edmonds, Picnic Point, Monroe and Oso.

By early Saturday afternoon, power had been restored to nearly every customer in Snohomish County, with about 80 homes and businesses still without electricity.

Snohomish PUD officials said there were five line crews and eight service crews in the field working on the remaining outages.

In Clallam County, more than 400 customers were still without power Saturday in the Neah Bay community.  Port Angeles had about 100 outages.

The outages were the result of high winds that continued across much of western Washington during a windy Friday evening and an onshore flow that brought the season’s first atmospheric river event.

According to KIRO-TV, as of 9 a.m. on Saturday, 13,894 Puget Sound Energy customers, 1,649 Clallam County PUD customers, and 263 Snohomish County PUD customers were without power.

This was after the National Weather Service issued a wind advisory Friday evening for San Juan, Whatcom and Skagit counties, the Admiralty Inlet, and the cities of Everett, Bellingham, Mount Vernon, and Port Townsend.

The advisory also cautioned travelers of the possibility of falling trees and branches.

Officials say in areas with the strongest winds (near the coast and the north interior), isolated impacts to power lines and trees are still a possibility.