An unusually strong May cold front swept through the North Olympic Peninsula on Monday, blowing down branches, kicking up debris and knocking out power to nearly 1,500 customers.
Jefferson County took the brunt of the blow with 1,350 Puget Sound Energy customers losing power. Most of the outages were in the Port Ludlow and Port Hadlock areas.
By 8:45 p.m., all but seven were back on the grid, said Dorothy Bracken, PSE spokeswoman.
Crews were working in three locations to replace wire, felled by fallen trees and limbs, that funneled electrical power to those seven customers, she said.
All of the outages were wind-related, PSE spokeswoman MacKenzie McDowell confirmed.
About 120 Clallam County Public Utility District customers experienced wind-caused outages, the largest of which affected 62 in the Priest Road area west of Sequim.
Another outage affected 39 PUD customers along Towne Road north of Sequim.
Power had been restored to all PUD customers by 5 p.m., PUD spokesman Jeff Beaman said.
55 mph gusts
The highest gust on the Peninsula was recorded at Point Wilson near Port Townsend: 55 mph.
Quilcene was relatively calm, with the highest recorded wind speed being 16 mph in the early morning hours, according to National Weather Service observations.
Sequim’s strongest gust was 43 mph at about 11:30 a.m.
The wind hit 33 mph at William R. Fairchild International Airport in Port Angeles on Monday afternoon. Sustained winds of more than 20 mph were felt in the morning.
On the West End of Clallam County, wind gusts hit highs of 37 mph at LaPush and Neah Bay and 36 mph at the Quillayute Airport near Forks.
“We have a pretty strong low pressure system that went through,” said Johnny Burg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.
“There was a good difference between the pressure gradients.”
The winds shifted from the south to the west as the cold front passed over the region and headed into southern British Columbia, Burg said.
He said the storm was fairly uncommon for this time of year.
Walter Hill, 65, of Port Townsend, was traveling north on Jacob Miller road at about 9:30 a.m. when he saw the tree on the opposite side of the street start to fall, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said.
He was unable to stop, and the tree fell onto his 1986 Nissan pickup, crushing the front of the truck and the windshield. Hill was not injured, the sheriff’s office said.
Power off at jail
At about 2:50 p.m., electrical power went off at the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and jail, and the generators kicked in immediately.
The power was out for about 45 minutes, but the office was able to work with the backup systems.
“If the power goes out during the day we get enough light through the windows, said Deputy Joe Nole, “so it’s not that big a deal to have to rely on the generators.”
Ross Tyler, Clallam County Engineer, said most of the damage occurred on the east side of Clallam County.
“We had a couple trees down in the east end but nothing of any significance, except one was hung up in a power line,” Tyler said.
The tree that fell into the line was actually in East Jefferson County on a short section of Chicken Coop Road that Clallam County maintains near Gardiner.
Olympic National Park reported a 2,000-foot snow level with an additional 4 to 10 inches of snow possible overnight. There was 91 inches of snow at Hurricane Ridge on Monday.
The National Weather Service lifted a high wind advisory for the region on Monday. Winds were forecast to subside to 10 to 15 mph today, Burg said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
