Winds Knock out Power to Thousands Sunday

March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, but apparently wanted to put in one last good showing on Sunday March 28th. 50+ mile per hour winds, drenching rains, hail and in some places, a flurry of snow swirled around central Puget Sound and wreaked havoc on area power lines. Winds blew in from both the south and the west, curving around the Olympics and creating a type of meteorological havoc known as a convergence zone.

South Eastern Jefferson County was hit hardest, with Center Valley, Coyle, Shine, Port Ludlow and Beaver Valley all having areas without power. At 11 am a total of 1,361 customers were out, though half were restored by noon. Unfortunately for the other half (most of them in the Shine/Thorndyke area) a tree took out a power pole that would need replacing. Replacing power poles is an all day job, and this one wasn’t complete until 8pm.

By 9pm, after a long day in some pretty miserable weather, crews had all customers restored. For an hour or so that is. They’d finished up just in time for the next set of winds to blow through the Straits and knock down branches onto lines that took out power to 1,500 in Port Townsend and Cape George. Power to the hospital was also lost, though crews were able to restore it through switching, also returning power to 800 of the 1500 before midnight. Crews kept working, and restored all but 100 customers by 3am by repairing equipment near Discovery and Sheridan Roads in PT.

By 7am all but a dozen customers were back on. At 8am the crew had restored everyone else, but before wrapping up for the day, had to head down to Dabob Rd to deal with a downed wire. In order to fix it, they had to cut power to 32 customers. By 10am the wire was fixed, the ordeal was done, the sun was shining and all customers had power. And the lineman and dispatchers could rest.

Mostly.