Damaging winds strike Western Washington

A fast-moving windstorm rolled through Western Washington and across the Cascades on Tuesday, bringing gusts as high as 60 mph in the northwestern part of the state and topping 100 mph in the Mission Ridge area, a forecaster said.

High winds brought down trees and power lines in several areas, temporarily closing State Highway 116 on Marrowstone Island near Port Townsend and State Route 164 west of Enumclaw in southeast King County, the state Transportation Department said.

Following the wind was a strong winter storm expected to bring snow and much colder temperatures today.

“We did have damaging winds in the northern third of Western Washington,” National Weather Service forecaster Carl Cerniglia said Tuesday evening, noting the windstorm passed through quickly.

Gusts of 45 mph were recorded at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

By mid-evening, snow was falling at the Everett airport, he said.

Northwest Washington could see 1-3 inches of snow through Wednesday — although Snohomish County might see more — while the greater Seattle area might see a trace to two inches, he said.

In Eastern Washington, the Weather Service forecast temperatures in the teens by Thursday, with overnight temperatures in single digits into the weekend.

Forecasters didn’t expect the storm to be as widespread or long-lasting as other storms in the past few weeks.

“We’ve had three significant storms within a little more than a month and a half, and a fourth is on its way. It’s definitely unusual,” Snohomish County Public Utility District spokesman Neil Neroutsos said earlier Tuesday.

A storm knocked out power to about 1.5 million people in the region Dec. 14-15. A snowstorm in late November knocked out power to 60,000 PUD customers, Neroutsos said.

Last week, winds cut power to 105,000 customers, he said.

Tuesday’s storm knocked out power to an estimated 13,000 Puget Sound Energy customers at its peak, mainly in Island, Skagit and Whatcom counties, but area crews, assisted by 30 outside crews from Oregon and Eastern Washington, were working to restore power, PSE spokesman Roger Thompson said Tuesday night.

Two separate outages affected roughly 3,500 Snohomish County PUD customers on Camano Island on Tuesday but most customers had power restored by Tuesday night, said PUD spokesman Mike Thorne.

“Wind is always the thing we worry about the most,” Thorne said. “So far, so good.”

Central Washington was hard-hit by a weekend storm that toppled trees and knocked out power to about 19,000 customers. Chelan County commissioners declared a state of emergency on Monday.