High winds caused widespread outages for Mason County and across Western Washington Dec. 17, affecting nearly 4,000 PUD 3 customers in total.
The storm brought gusts as high as 47 mph (recorded at Sanderson Field) and led to widespread power outages, most of which began late in the early hours of Dec. 17. At the peak of the storm at 1 a.m., approximately 3,133 customers were without power. The outages began to decline significantly in the early afternoon as crews worked to restore power and winds died down mid-morning. Full restoration came at about 11:17 p.m. that night.
To manage the situation, PUD 3 opened its outage center around 12:52 a.m., which brings an “all-hand-on-deck” type of approach. The outage center remained opened until 11 p.m., when all outages had been assigned to crews and restoration was nearly complete.
The longest outage and most difficult to restore affected customers on Ryan, Fredson, and nearby roads off Highway 101 toward Taylor Town. Drivers could see the crew work to replace poles where multiple trees had snapped them in half and damaged other equipment. Other major outages involved much of Lake Cushman and a large portion of customers along Arcadia Road.
In total, PUD 3 received about 118 unique outages, many of which were reports of branches or trees leaning on lines, sometimes with power still on. In some cases, crews were able to simply remove branches and “switch things back on,” but in some cases, the restoration work was far more complicated.
Some neighboring utilities fared far worse across multiple counties in Western Washington and even some in Eastern Washington. On Dec. 18, Mason 3 sent a crew to help Snohomish PUD with their restoration efforts.
Outage updates can be found on the PUD 3 website, Facebook, X, and on the outage map at pud3.org/outagemap.
