SEATTLE — As a High Wind Advisory expires for parts of western Washington, the impact of heavy overnight gusts has left almost 150,000 customers without power Wednesday morning.
As of 7:15 a.m. Wednesday, over 63,000 Puget Sound Energy customers were without power. Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) reported over 13,000 without power and the Snohomish Public Utilities District is reporting over 28,000 without power.
"We are aware of numerous outages across our service area this morning due to the wind storm, affecting about 11,000 customers. Crews are working to safely and quickly restore power," TPU said in a social media post Wednesday morning.
In Renton, an emergency road closure at Renton Avenue South between Southwest Victoria Street and Hardie Avenue Southwest was put in place due to a fallen tree and power outage.
PSE shared a social media post Tuesday night indicating that it was preparing for potential outages Wednesday. "Our crews are ready to deploy with assignments when outages occur, as soon as it’s safe to do so," PSE said just after 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Elementary schools in Issaquah affected by power outages will open on a two-hour delay, while the two middle schools currently without power will plan to open at the regular time.
The strong winds came with a heavy rainstorm Tuesday and significant snow in the Cascades. Wind speeds reached 60 mph in Hoquiam as the most heavy gusts hit along the coasts and Admiralty Inlet.