Crews repair power lines after outages impacted thousands in Western Washington

Crews with the Snohomish County Public Utility District (Snohomish PUD) and Puget Sound Energy (PSE) have been working since Monday to restore power all over Western Washington after a rough stretch of weather.

As of 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, fewer than 850 customers in the region were still affected by power outages. That number stood at more than 25,000 customers at 5:25 p.m. Monday and it reached more than 50,000 customers earlier Monday.

According to the Snohomish PUD outage map, just seven customers reported power outages as of 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. About 1,700 customers still were without power as of about 6:39 a.m. Tuesday, many in the northern part of the county. That number dropped steadily throughout the day Monday. The utility reported 6,825 customers were without power around 5:30 p.m. Monday. As of 4:20 p.m., 12,930 customers didn’t have power. During the 3 p.m. hour Monday, 19,881 customers were without power.

Snohomish PUD noted the sustained winds and gusts that blasted the state Monday, which led to the utility issues, “slowly tapered off” in the evening.

The utility reported Tuesday afternoon it is working on restoring power to customers in several cities, including Arlington. It also reported other issues it is dealing with.

Crews worked to restore power to remaining customers in Stanwood, Arlington and Granite Falls today. We plan to have all customers restored by this afternoon.

We continue to receive reports of wire down and trees in lines that will keep our Servicemen busy throughout the day. pic.twitter.com/kgprARl1lM

— Snohomish County PUD (@SnoPUD) November 5, 2024

The PSE outage map is reporting 57 outages and 813 customers not having power over multiple areas of Western Washington. That number is lower than numbers seen Tuesday morning and during the day Monday.

There were 76 outages and 3,612 customers without power as of 6:39 a.m. Tuesday. At 5:10 p.m. Monday, those numbers stood at 245 different outages and 17,940 customers. At 4:35 p.m., the number of outages hit 282 outages and 18,583 customers affected. Earlier this afternoon, the utility reported 260 different outages and 26,002 customers not having power.

In a statement on its website dated noon on Tuesday, PSE explained the “damaging winds” caused the outages around the service area. It added Island, Whatcom, and Skagit counties in the north and Thurston County in the south were most impacted.

The utility reported its crews have “restored power to 99% of affected customers” It also noted over 150,000 customers were impacted throughout the storm.

The Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) map of power outages reported no remaining outages for its customers as of 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. More than 530 customers were without power as of 5:15 p.m. Monday. That number was over 600 as of 4:10 p.m. and over 800 earlier Monday afternoon.

It should be noted Seattle City Light also is not reporting any major outages at this time, according to its outage map. KIRO 7 reported earlier Monday afternoon more than 1,000 Seattle customers didn’t have power at one point.

Weather was the cause of the Washington power outages

The National Weather Service Seattle reported in a thread on X Sunday that “a strong weather system will bring southerly winds will pick up across the region early Monday morning.” 

That proved to be the case as high winds bombarded the area during the day Monday.

KIRO 7 Chief Meteorologist Morgan Palmer reported Monday afternoon the wind gusts seen all over the state were significant.

“Wind so far today has been in line with the forecast and the High Wind Warning, with gusts over 60 mph earlier at Oak Harbor and Forks and some gusts over 50 mph at Bellingham, Sequim, Port Angeles, and Tacoma Narrows,” Palmer said in a report emailed to KIRO Newsradio.

Aaron Swaney, a spokesperson for Snohomish PUD, told the Daily Herald in Everett the storm lived up to the forecast.

“We knew it was going to peak around 1:30 or 2, and the forecast was correct,” Swaney said, according to the Everett media outlet.

Palmer went on to state in his report “the High Wind Warning has been pared back to only include Island County and eastern Clallam County from near Port Angeles east to Port Townsend, expiring by 4 a.m. (Tuesday).

Contributing: Frank Sumrall, MyNorthwest

Steve Coogan is the lead editor of MyNorthwest. You can read more of his stories here. Follow Steve on X, or email him here.