About 8K customers still without power in aftermath of Wednesday storm

New outages were reported due to more high winds early Friday, but local utilities continued making progress in recovering from Wednesday’s windstorm.

About 8,000 electricity customers in the Inland Northwest remained without power early Friday afternoon.

Outages at their peak Wednesday morning topped 100,000.

Wind gusts peaked at 54 mph Thursday night and early Friday in the Spokane region, according to Steve Bodnar, meteorologist with the National Weather Service Spokane. Gusts reached 62 mph around midnight in Pullman.

Bodnar said gusts could reach as high as 40 early Saturday morning in the area.

Here were the remaining outages as of 6:45 p.m. Friday.

• 7,000 Avista Utilities customers. That is down from 77,400 at about 8 a.m. Wednesday. Most outages are in North Idaho and the Palouse.

• 700 Inland Power customers. That is down from 14,400 at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday.

• 100 Northern Lights customers in Bonner County as well as 300 in Boundary County. That is down from 8,500 in Bonner County and 2,100 in Boundary County at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

• About 30 Kootenai Electric Cooperative customers. That is down from 9,300 at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday.

• About 20 Pend Oreille Public Utility District customers remained affected Thursday. That is down from 2,500 at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.

• Vera Water and Power customers in Spokane Valley restored power to all customers. The utility had about 180 customers without power Wednesday.