More than 100,000 people lost power in western Washington state Saturday evening as a powerful cold front swept through the region.
The storm system battered the coast with strong winds for much of Saturday afternoon and evening, particularly on the Central Coast. Hoquiam recorded hours of wind gusts over 50 to 60 mph, with several recorded gusts over 65 mph and twice reaching a peak gust of 69 mph.
Gusts reached 40 to 50 mph in the Puget Sound region, with Sea-Tac recording a 46 mph gust, Everett hitting 48 and Bellevue recording a 50 mph gust.
With many trees still somewhat leafy, the trees and branches were no match for the gusts of wind. Washington had just over 115,000 customers without power as of 9:30 p.m. PST, according to PowerOutage.com. Nearly half of those outages occurred in Seattle, where Seattle City Light had about 46,000 customers in the dark.
In Lewis County in the South Sound, winds downed trees on the southbound lanes of I-5 near the US 12 (milepost 68) interchange. The Washington State Patrol said multiple vehicles were involved in crashes, but did not give the extent of the injuries.
The winds were coming from a powerful storm that, although it made landfall well to the north in central British Columbia, was still strong enough to bring strong winds to the coast and spawn a powerful cold front in western Washington.
The convective properties of the front attracted the attention of the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, essentially the National Severe Weather Center based in Norman, Oklahoma. They sent out a very rare note for the Northwest of “mesoscale convection discussion” that there could be a relatively brief but stronger burst of winds as this front moves on the coast and across the Olympic Peninsula Saturday evening.
NOAA had even placed the Olympic Peninsula in a Level 1 of 5 Severe Weather Threat Zone – but only for potential severe wind gusts (58 mph or greater) – no risk of hail or tornadoes – or even a lot of lightning.
High wind warnings remained in effect until 4 a.m. Sunday along the coast for gusts up to 60 mph, and wind advisories also remained in effect for the Olympic Peninsula and the I-5/Puget Sound area for continued possible gusts up to 45 to 50 mph.
The wind and rain will ease Sunday morning and the weather will remain relatively calm until Monday, when two more storms target Western Washington. These storms so far appear to be more caused by rain than wind.
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