PUD works to repair damage that cut power to about 28K customers; schools and Edmonds College closed

Crews at work in Edmonds’ Maplewood neighborhood. (Photos by Rebecca Anderson)

Updated with additional details on Edmonds closures.

Southwest Snohomish County residents awoke to power outages, downed power lines and broken tree limbs following a windstorm that hit the area Tuesday night.

The Edmonds School District said all schools would be closed Wednesday due to power outages and current road conditions. All after-school activities and evening events at district buildings (including non-district events) are also canceled, the district said. Edmonds College also said it would be closed Wednesday, with all classes and activities canceled.

Snohomish County PUD spokesperson Aaron Swaney said that about 28,000 PUD customers were without power Wednesday morning, with most of them in the areas of Edmonds, Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace.

“We are looking at some significant damage to our system, including trees down across wires and poles down, in the southwest portion of the county,” Swaney said. “We have more than 30 crews out in the field currently, but road conditions are challenging and are currently slowing down our processes. ”

PUD customers can check the status of outages and report one at the outage map link.

Graphic courtesy Snohomiosh County PUD

Many residents reported seeing flashing lights and loud bangs in their neighborhood, which they assumed was a blown transformer. Swaney said that nearly all of the time that is due to the cutout or fuse that is opening up in the power pole, often caused by an animal or falling branch. “This ‘opens’ the circuit and de-energizes the lines due to a fault somewhere along the circuit,” he said.

Edmonds’ Frances Anderson Center and the Edmonds Waterfront Center are closed. Yost Park is closed. “People need to please stay out of the park due to the possibility of downed power lines and trees,” City spokesperson Kelsey Foster said. “It is unsafe at the moment.” Yost Park reopening will be determined once the damage has been assessed, she said.

With the inclement weather and power outages, some services may be disrupted as city employees will be working remotely or are unable to make it onsite. Please call or email directly as needed, Foster said.

As for the streets, snow plows were running all night and continued Wednesday morning. Many trees were also down and tree crews cleared every tree that didn’t have any power lines in it.

Seven roads that were closed due to trees down have been cleared and are now open. Thirteen road closures waiting for PUD to clear power lines, Foster said.

All of the sewer lift stations were without power at one point but power has been restored at eight of them. Of the remaining six without power, three are on generators and the crews are monitoring them. Generators are ready to deploy at the other three lift stations if needed, Foster said. No spills or overflows have occurred. 

As of Wednesday morning, there were also four traffic signals down. “Our signals are on batteries but if the power is out too long the battery gets used and the signal no longer works,” she explained.

 

  1. PUD hasn’t done much to reduce these kinds of outages in the last 5 years. This is the second significantly long outage in my neighborhood in the past 6 weeks. Maybe before they raise our rates they should do more to ensure we aren’t left without power for over 12 hours at a time!

    1. I can say the same for my neighborhood. We have been out since last night. Every year for 22 years we have lost power. While I appreciate the crews out there it seems aggressive tree maintenance would be less costly for PUD and for the customers who will be tossing out refrigerators and freezers full of food.

    2. AMEN! They know there are problem areas so it seems like they should be prioritizing these during the summer months.
      My friend back in Ohio that worked for the power company worked heavily in the summer making needed repairs so as to avoid these outages in the winter. Take a lesson PUD.

    3. The efforts taken by PUD to restore your power are nothing short of heroic. They are truly out there risking life to get the power up. This storm event was wet and heavy with the first snow coming with leaves remaining in the trees. PUD has a very aggressive maintenance program doing preventive clearing. Their efforts are are remarkable actually, and with constant resistance from city’s and residents wishing to preserve tree canopies. There are times that Mother Nature is going to win regardless of human attempts.
      Thanks for the efforts PUD ! I hugely appreciate what you do

      Tod Moles City of Edmonds Street Dept.

  2. I’m grateful to Sno Co PUD for working super hard and getting our power back in Seaview today. Nicely done.

  3. I have lived in Edmonds for 25 years and I haven’t seen this before. Returned to my home from the coast mid day today and it looked like a war zone. I don’t think PUD could have prepared for this since a lot of damage was caused on private properties with snow heavy rain soaked branches taking out power lines that were yanked from the posts on the street. Maybe the snowstorm in 1996 was equal to this but I didn’t live in edmonds at the time. I am thankful for the PUD. Please keep working hard.

    1. I was here in 1996 (and for about 40 years total), and this storm was the worst I had seen as well. I find it wonderfully impressive how clear the roads were on the way to work. The power came back on very quickly for us, which was a complete shock when I saw how many trees were down, broken and damaged. And that was just on my drive, so I can only imagine what was going on everywhere else.

  4. Thank you PUD. We take our connection to power for granted until weather and tree incidents happen and we feel helpless. Helps us understand areas of the US and world where they have worse conditions. I appreciate your restoring power to our homes amid less than enjoyable weather conditions.

    1. Paddy you are right……as the day went on I thought about how good we have it in comparison to other areas of this world. Thanks to the crews for their tireless work yesterday.

  5. It’s nice to see positive praise for all the hard working people. We all need to be more thankful and appreciate what people are doing to keep us safe.

  6. Thank you PUD. Can’t control the weather doing damage, and appreciate all that you do to get power back on.

  7. In over 20 years we never had a storm like this. We have underground power but still were out overnight.
    With a cozy hat, 3 layers of clothes and 3 layers of blankets I was able to sleep. I was very happy when the power came back at about 8am. Thank you, crews.

  8. I really appreciate the PUD employees who go out into the dark nights and cold weather and fix these problems.
    However, when are the trees going to be trimmed enough, not only by PUD but owners of trees that give no thought to the danger they are letting grow each year. Can’t everyone take responsibility?

  9. Before you dare to take that huge limb down which hangs over the power line near the transformer for your street, you need to get a permit from the city tree board to assure that you are not violating any anti climate altering rules by unbalancing the carbon dioxide / oxygen balance and removing too much of our precious and disappearing tree canopy. Have you no environmental empathy whatsoever? Just wanting the electron flow for your creature comforts never to be interrupted, under any circumstances. Shame on us all.

    Seriously, great job PUD under difficult circumstances. We didn’t loose power that much or for as long in the past, because the climate was different thirty years ago, with much less wet snow events and less high wind events. Plus there are about a zillion more of us trying to live in the same amount of space. Power lines go into some areas of second and third growth tress that were not built up back then.

  10. The wet snow of this storm took down more branches and more power lines than we’ve seen in many years…thanks to the PUD crews for working hard and fast to repair the damage.

    Some of us are trying to do our $0.02 for the environment by taking out lawn and planting trees in our yards. I have about 50 mature trees planted either by the builder when the house went up or by me. Several large branches came down in my yard which I need to dispose of. The new state law (Thanks Marko and Strom !!) that prohibits bringing the yard debris to the transfer station is causing a big hassle with this storm cleanup. Seems like a disincentive to planting/maintaining trees in our yards….who knows what the powers that be were thinking when they dreamed this one up.

    1. “The new state law (Thanks Marko and Strom !!) that prohibits bringing the yard debris to the transfer station is causing a big hassle…”

      Is it a law?

      If it is a law it’s a huge inconvenience and costly – the extra 15+ mile drive to and from the disposal sites and the inconsistent doubling and tripling the cost of the load (compared to the SnoCo facility in Mountlake Terrace) is outrageous. If it’s not a law it certainly needs looking into.

      1. See this story from earlier in November after another storm:https://myedmondsnews.com/2022/11/county-encourages-residents-to-use-yard-debris-recyling-businesses-after-windstorm/
        “There are many local composting businesses ready to accept yard debris. Due to ongoing rail and container issues, Snohomish County Solid Waste transfer stations and drop boxes are temporarily not accepting these items.”
        So not a state law but a county decision due to solid waste issues, it appears.

        1. Yes it’s a new WA state law, HB1799. It used to be pretty easy to load the pickup with one storm worth of downed branches and drive it to MLT transfer station but those days are gone. Sno Co transfer stations no longer allow yard debris and they are referring to this new law when questioned about it.

        2. I think there is some confusion with this new law and transfer stations I think the law doesn’t want yard debris to be mixed in with other garbage so when they pause receipt of material because of transportation issues “yard waste” they won’t allow you to dump it with the regular garbage which they are still accepting. They have been separating yard waste from the regular garbage for a long time so when you show up with yard debris which they have paused accepting they point to the new law as to why you can’t dump the yard debris with the rest of the garbage. Hope this clears this up. The second part of the law deals with food waste that sounds like something we will have to deal with in the next few years.

  11. Good points John. We took out most of our lawn recently replacing it with permiable rock path, flower beds and various trees and shrubs. We had tomatoes, goose berries and a few red pie cherries from a young tree. Also cucumbers and squash. Much more fun than lawn. What little lawn we have left is on it’s own – no fertilizer and no water in Summer. It survives barely on North exposure which is just fine.

  12. If you have room, piling up the branches that fell provides a habitat and safe place for all kinds of small critters. Chipping such debris makes great mulch or compost, and the larger limbs can be bucked and used as firewood next time there’s a power failure. Admitted, chipper/shredders cost, but they’re a good investment if you have regular piles of yard and tree waste.

  13. People need to use discretion in choosing trees in their yards. Two I will mention to avoid are
    1. Leyland Cypress is a hybrid tree which can grow to 80 feet high and 40 feet wide
    2. Redwood, a beautiful native of the California and Oregon coast. It also grows very tall and in our climate is subject to branches breaking.
    A friend fairly recently had many branches break off her redwood tree. Her former owner had brought back a tiny redwood from northern California. Now 40 years later the tree has grown to an enormous size and is shedding branches.
    Do research before planting. We have many wonderful native trees and slower growing evergreens in our area.

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