About 34,000 homes and businesses in the Seattle area were still without power early Sunday after a fast-moving cold front brought gusty south winds across Western Washington on Saturday night. Seattle City Light listed 21,497 customers out in 57 outages as of about 5:40 a.m. Pacific on its outage map, and Puget Sound Energy reported 12,507 customers out in 219 outages at 5:39 a.m., according to its outage list.
Both numbers were falling. At about 1 a.m., the two utilities had about 45,000 customers out between them.
Where the wind hit
The National Weather Service in Seattle had wind advisories up overnight for areas including Olympia and the southern Puget Sound, eastern Kitsap County, Hood Canal, the Chehalis River valleys and the western Strait of Juan de Fuca. They called for south winds of 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 45 to 50 mph and warned that tree limbs could come down. A high wind warning covered the north coast and the Grays Harbor coast. All of those alerts ended by early Sunday.
"Quick hitting cold fronts like the one Saturday night almost always cause trouble," a forecaster wrote in the agency's Sunday morning forecast discussion.
What to expect today and this week
Sunday should be calmer, with a few showers that dry up in the afternoon and highs in the mid 50s. The one hazard still in effect is a high surf warning for the north coast and Grays Harbor coast until 10 p.m. Sunday. The Weather Service says breaking waves can knock people off their feet and sweep them into the ocean, and drifting logs can injure or kill people watching from the beach.
Another front brings rain to the coast early Monday afternoon and to the interior by the Monday evening commute, with wind along the coast and in the northwest interior that forecasters say will be "nothing like we had Saturday." After a warm, possibly record-setting Wednesday in the low to mid 60s, an atmospheric river is forecast to set up over Western Washington on Friday and Saturday.
Customers can check restoration estimates for their address on each utility's map. The latest restoration estimate Seattle City Light had posted for its remaining outages was about 8:20 p.m. Sunday.
