UPDATE: Five-hour power outage for almost 5,000 West Seattle customers. Plus, Junction tree down (but not the outage cause)
5:48 PM: More than 4,900 homes and businesses are out of power right now, mostly in northwest West Seattle. Not sure yet about what’s to blame – multiple trees have just been reported down, including one at California/Alaska in The Junction blocking part of northbound California.
(Thanks to Amy for the photo – she says “It hit a row of Lime bikes but nothing else”)
(Added: WSB photo by Oliver Hamlin, showing the aforementioned Lime bikes)
Updates to come.
5:54 PM: Police radio indicates the outage is likely related to a tree down in the Admiral area. (Exactly where, we don’t know – nothing telltale on the SFD or SPD logs.) You’ve probably noticed the wind kicking up big time this evening – the National Weather Service did not have our area under an alert for that, though.
6:20 PM: The wind has calmed somewhat, at least up here.
6:42 PM: A commenter points out that the NWS has belatedly posted a Wind Advisory alert, timestamped 6:10 pm, in effect until midnight.
7:41 PM: Several notes/comments suggest this originated somewhere in this area uphill from south Alki.
7:57 PM: Our archives say this is the 15th West Seattle outage this year affecting 100 or more customers. Half were blamed on falling trees. We also had a few caused by drivers hitting poles, an unfortunate bird, an unexplained pole fire, and the most recent one before this, 3,000 customers on November 23, was blamed on “a broken cross-arm.”
8:43 PM: Still out. Remember, don’t open your refrigerator/freezer – the air temp will stay low for hours. How many hours? Here’s the federal advice.
9:51 PM: No updates; fifth hour now. The customers out in West Seattle are now more than two-thirds of those out SCL-wide.
10:03 PM: Yma points out in comments that the Wind Advisory has been extended to 3 am. It’s also now suggesting top gusts could reach 55 mph, 10 mph above the previous forecast.
10:50 PM: Saw a flicker, hoped it meant some were getting restored, and indeed, the SCL map says the power’s back on for most. Fewer than 100 are still shown as out.
