By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES — A strong storm system brought heavy rains to western Washington last night, but Clallam County appears to have dodged most of the problems seen in other counties.
Thousands of customers across the region are still without power today, following what was the largest windstorm of the season.
At the peak, nearly 40,000 customers spread across western Washington were without power Tuesday evening. Nicole Hartman of Clallam PUD said we got lucky this time.
“Yes, we were quite fortunate. We’ve had some isolated outages, handful at the Hoko-Ozette, and there was a car versus pole accident, but we did not experience the high winds that were forecasted.”
Hartman said a driver took out a power pole and left about 100 people without power for a couple of hours, but that can hardly be blamed on the winds. She said there are still some concerns even as the weather has calmed down, though.
“The only other thing we’re still concerned about, of course, is the ground is pretty heavily saturated. So there’s always a risk of, you know, a tree still coming down here as we experience more rains, but we just encourage anybody who sees a branch or a tree on the line to give us a call.”
King tides severely impacted people who live near shorelines, especially in Skagit, Whatcom, San Juan and Island counties.
But, again, Undersheriff Ron Cameron says we avoided the worst of that as well.
“You know, the king tides are what they are. They’ll come in, and with the rivers as high as they are, it’s a good chance that 112 and those trouble areas could be shut down for short periods of time. But I think we’ve dodged the bullet and we’re past most of the the problem times.”
Cameron said county officials are keeping a close watch on hillsides and other areas because of the potential this week for slides due to heavily saturated soils.