Windstorm causes scattered power outages in Thurston County
Crews are still working to restore power in pockets around Thurston County after strong winds rolled through the area Tuesday and early Wednesday.
Puget Sound Energy listed more than 20 outages in the Thurston County area and about six near Centralia as of 9:10 a.m. Wednesday. In its Western Washington service area, PSE crews were responding to 107 outages that affected 16,881 customers. Since last Thursday, PSE said it has dealt with more than 235,000 customer outages.
About 40,000 PSE customers were without power Tuesday evening, according to a PSE Tweet.
Wind gusts between 45-55 miles per hour were reported in several locations. PSE said the hardest hit areas included Thurston County as well as King, Kitsap and Pierce counties.
In Thurston County, a large outage affected about 236 Tumwater customers east of Interstate 5 and south of South Puget Sound Community College starting at about 5:45 p.m. Tuesday. PSE blamed trees and vegetation.
Another large outage affected 238 customers near Ken Lake and U.S. 101 in west Olympia. This outage started at 11:49 a.m. Tuesday but the cause remained under investigation Wednesday morning.
Olympia saw a peak wind speed of 48 miles per hour on Tuesday, according to data collected by the National Weather Service in Seattle. The NWS also recorded gusts of 42 miles per hour at Interstate 5 near Grand Mound.
As winds battered the region, many areas also dealt with flooding. In downtown Olympia, some roads were closed due to flooding caused by rain and record-breaking king tides.
A coastal flood warning remained in effect until 1 p.m. Wednesday, according to the NWS. This warning affected the Olympia area as well as areas around Tacoma, Hood Canal, Seattle and Bremerton.
The NWS said roads may be closed and low-lying property and infrastructure could be inundated. It also warned of shoreline erosion.
Motorists are advised not to drive around barricades or through water of unknown depth, the NWS said.
Heavy rains in Western Washington subsided by Wednesday morning, but the NWS said recent heavy rainfall has created unstable soil conditions. As such, landslides remained a threat on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the NWS expects a weakening weather system to arrive from the southwest, bringing more rain.
Temperatures will likely peak in the high 40s the rest of the week and lows will be around 40 degrees, according to the NWS forecast.
This story was originally published December 28, 2022 at 10:44 AM.
