Powerful cold front knocks out power to more than 100,000 across western Washington

SEATTLE — A powerful Pacific cold front tore through western Washington on Saturday night, cutting electricity to well over 100,000 customers at its peak and whipping up gusts strong enough to topple trees onto Interstate 5 south of Seattle. Forecasters said it was only the first in a string of storm systems lined up to cross the region through the coming week.

By 9:30 p.m. Saturday, more than 115,000 customers across the Puget Sound area had lost power, according to outage tracking cited in a detailed storm recap by meteorologist Scott Sistek. Nearly half of those outages were inside Seattle city limits, where Seattle City Light's outage map showed roughly 46,000 customers dark at the height of the storm. Crews worked through the night, and by 4:30 a.m. Sunday the citywide count had fallen to about 50,000 still without service.

The numbers behind the storm

The outages tracked a wind event that forecasters described as unusually sharp for early November, driven by a fast-moving cold front that swept onshore Saturday evening. Peak gusts recorded around the region included Hoquiam on the coast at 69 mph, Sea-Tac International Airport at 46 mph, Everett at 48 mph, Bellevue at 50 mph, Port Townsend and Lynden at 52 mph, Ferndale at 55 mph, and Crystal Mountain's summit in the Cascades at 93 mph.

The winds were strong enough that the National Weather Service office in Seattle flagged a broader pattern rather than a single passing squall, warning that a series of cold fronts from North Pacific storms would bring repeated rounds of gusty wind, rain and high-elevation snow to the region this weekend and into next week.

South of Seattle, Washington State Patrol troopers responded to a multi-vehicle collision on southbound I-5 near milepost 68, close to the junction with U.S. 12 in Lewis County, after falling trees blocked all lanes Saturday night. The extent of any injuries from that crash was not immediately available.

Unusually warm air set the stage

Part of what made the damage so extensive, meteorologists said, was timing: the front arrived on the heels of a stretch of unseasonable warmth that kept deciduous trees fuller of leaves, and therefore more vulnerable to toppling in wind, than is typical by early November. Seattle reached 62 degrees Saturday, just shy of its record high for the date, while Bellingham set an outright daily record at 66 degrees and parts of central Washington touched the low 70s. That warm, humid air mass fed the front as it crossed the Pacific, helping drive the gusts that followed within hours of the daytime high.

South King County hit hard overnight

Among the hardest-hit pockets was a swath of south King County stretching from Three Tree Point north through Boulevard Park into White Center, Burien, SeaTac and Tukwila. According to a local news outlet covering the area, more than 20,000 customers in that corridor were without power late Saturday, part of a wider count that topped 30,000 across the utility's service territory at that point in the night. Seattle City Light listed the cause of the largest single outage as under investigation and continued updating its public outage map every five minutes overnight. The utility has urged anyone encountering a downed line to stay at least 30 feet away and call 911 rather than approach it.

Puget Sound Energy, which serves suburban and rural customers across much of the wider Puget Sound region outside Seattle's city limits, had posted a storm-preparedness notice days earlier warning that a series of weather systems was expected to bring gusty winds and stormy conditions.

Our crews will remain in the field to assess damage and restore power as long as it is safe... we'll work around the clock to restore it as quickly and safely as possible.

More storms already lined up

Washington's wind advisories tied to Saturday's front were lifted around 1 a.m. Sunday as the system moved inland, but forecasters said residents should not expect a quiet stretch. A second, somewhat weaker storm was expected to bring additional rain Monday and Tuesday, with winds forecast to stay below Saturday's peak gusts but still brisk, particularly along the coast. A following cold front was expected to stall offshore by Wednesday, Veterans Day, pulling in another pulse of unusually warm air that forecasters said could push Seattle-area highs into the mid-to-upper 60s. Behind that, a weaker front was due to bring light rain Thursday, and longer-range models pointed to the possibility of a wetter system arriving by the following weekend.

As of Sunday morning, neither Seattle City Light nor Puget Sound Energy had released a final, region-wide tally of how many customers remained without power or how long full restoration was expected to take, and no storm-related fatalities had been reported.