A severe windstorm that struck Mason County and across Western Washington Oct. 25-26 caused significant outages, affecting more than 6,000 PUD 3 customers at its peak.
The storm brought gusts as high as 47 mph and led to widespread power outages, most of which began around 6 PM. At the peak of the storm at 11 PM, approximately 6,186 customers were without power. The outages began to decline after 11 PM, with nearly all services restored by early Sunday morning.
To manage the situation, PUD 3 opened its outage center around 9 PM, which brings an “all-hand-on-deck” type of approach. The outage center remained opened until around 4:30 AM, when winds had died down and most outages were either restored or in the process of restoration.
Some neighboring utilities fared far worse, such as Grays Harbor PUD, where some wind gusts were recorded into the 70s mph and power was lost to around 29,000 customers. PUD 3 sent mutual aid with a transmission truck, which stayed close to 24 hours on the coast.
In total, PUD 3 received about 89 unique outage tickets, many of which were reports of branches or trees leaning on lines with power still on. Crews were able to quickly remove trees and branches, including several that had affected the Collins Lake substation and all of Tahuya Peninsula, where the bulk of outages occurred.
Outage updates can be found on the PUD 3 website, Facebook, X, and on the outage map at pud3.org/outagemap.