SEATTLE — A strong windstorm powered by a bomb cyclone off the Washington coast knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people in western Washington on Tuesday night.
With extensive work that needs to be done to get electricity flowing again, many are wondering when their power will return.
Here is the protocol for restoring power at three of the largest agencies impacted by the storm: Puget Sound Energy, Seattle City Light and Snohomish PUD.
PSE, which has the most customers without power at over 100,000, released updated estimated restoration times by county Friday morning.
Most of King County is expected to be restored by Saturday at noon. Power in Whatcom, Skagit, Island and Kitsap counties is expected to be restored by Friday at 6 p.m. Most of Pierce County has been restored, and restoration times for remaining pockets are listed on PSE's outage map.
PSE's outage map provides estimated restoration times for specific outages. A PSE spokesperson said restoration times were conservative.
PSE warned it was anticipating a multiple day outage for some customers and encouraged people to make alternate plans.
A lot of the damage was to the transmission system, a PSE spokesperson said. Crews will bring transmission lines back online Thursday, which needs to happen before crews can attend to the local distribution system.
Hardest hit areas include east King County, such as Issaquah, and south King County, including Ravensdale and Enumclaw, according to PSE.
Seattle City Light, which at the height of the storm had about 92,000 customers without power, said it first sends crews to areas that pose an immediate safety threat. Next, city light prioritizes areas with emergency services and facilities critical to public health and safety, like hospitals. Then, crews tackle areas serving the largest number of customers and work their way down from there.
As of Friday morning, most outages were expected to be restored by late afternoon, according to restoration times on the city’s outage map.
Snohomish PUD, which reported over 117,000 customers out of power at the height of the storm, tracks estimated restoration times on its outage map online. However, the agency was unable to provide restoration times for many areas as it was still assessing damage after the storm. Snohomish PUD said it would update its map once restoration times are available.
The utility company had five phases of priority when restoring power after a storm. First, it tackles outages at the higher-voltage transmission level that affect a large number of customers, such as hospitals, schools or businesses. Next it cleans up oil spills and clears downed wires blocking roadways or on buildings and cars. Then it restores substation mainline circuits that serve neighborhoods and businesses. Fourth, it addresses smaller outages serving a couple customers. Finally, it restores nonessential street lights.
PSE said this storm caused one of the largest outages in recent years. It was on par with two storms in the last 20 years. In January 2012, a storm caused an eight-day outage that impacted 476,000 people, and in December 2006, 700,000 people were out of power for multiple days.