Breezy weather conditions caused electrical power outages across the North Olympic Peninsula on Friday and early Saturday morning but by Saturday afternoon public utility customers were reported to be back online.
More than 6,000 Clallam County Public Utility District customers were without power on Friday because of wind damage, PUD officials said.
About 5,400 customers on the West End and around Lake Sutherland lost power because of a tree leaning into a Bonneville Power Administration line.
Another 752 customers lost power in the Diamond Point area after a falling tree broke a pole.
West End outages were cleared by about 2:20 p.m. Friday, Clallam PUD officials said.
More outages were reported in the area of O’Brien Road at 3:21 p.m. Those were fixed within a couple of hours, said Nicole Clark, Clallam PUD spokesperson.
All outages had been cleared by Saturday afternoon, Clark said.
Jefferson County PUD crews were working all day Friday and through the night repairing outages, said Will O’Donnell, spokesman.
Power went out on Marrowstone Island early Friday and was fixed by 10:30 a.m., according to the PUD website.
At about 6:30 p.m. Friday, some 1,200 customers lost electrical power along Cape George Road.
At about 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday morning, some 2,500 lost electrical power when fuses opened up at a substation in Port Townsend, O’Connell said.
All had been restored to full power by late Saturday afternoon, O’Donnell said.
It was most gusty on the Peninsula during early Saturday morning except in Forks, said Jacob DeFlitch, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.
The Coast Guard station in Port Angeles reported gusts of 40-45 mph between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Saturday, he said, while wind speed at the more inland Fairchild International Airport reached 29 mph between 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. Sequim had gusts up to 35 mph.
The peak wind gust in Port Townsend was about 34 mph at about 4 a.m., DeFlitch said.
The winds were highest in Forks on Friday afternoon. The gusts of 20-30 mph left a downtown intersection without a traffic light for a time.
“It’ll start getting breezy again,” today, DeFlitch said.
The windiest weather is predicted in the Port Townsend area, where residents can expect gusts from 35-40 mph, he said.
The high winds are spawned by a series of frontal systems moving through the region. They are expected to bring increasing rain to the area Monday and Tuesday, DeFlitch said.
