PORT ANGELES — Power was restored by 4 a.m. Tuesday to more than 6,000 West End electrical customers who lost service just about at dinnertime Monday evening because of a fault on a Bonneville Power Administration line.
Clallam County Public Utility District reported 6,464 customers — nearly a fifth of it customers — were out of power at 6:45 p.m., with 197 of those customers in West Jefferson County. The first outages were reported at about 6:20 p.m. Monday.
“BPA (Bonneville Power Administration) couldn’t find anything” cutting power on its line, “so they just re-energized,” said Nicole Hartman, PUD spokesperson, Tuesday morning.
Crews patrolled the line, which begins west of Port Angeles and services all of the West End, and found no fault in it, Hartman said.
It can happen that power is cut off by a branch falling into a line and then tumbling off of it, she said, explaining a possible reason why nothing was found and the line simply needed to be re-energized.
BPA has three lines coming into Clallam County, Hartman said. Power can be rerouted when the lines coming into Happy Valley and downtown Port Angeles go down, but that is not the case for the line providing electricity to the West End.
Camp Hayden was without power in a separate outage, but electricity was restored by Tuesday morning.
East Jefferson County PUD reported a few outages Sunday night south of Port Ludlow but none on Monday or Tuesday.
That county dodged the worst of a storm that, despite sunny skies in the lowlands, continued dropping snow in the mountains Tuesday and affected some 50,000 electrical customers elsewhere in the state on Monday.
Hurricane Ridge Road was closed at the Heart O’ The Hills entry station on Tuesday morning because of storm conditions. The snow level at Waterhole SNOTEL site at Hurricane Ridge was reported to be 105 inches — 8.75 feet.
The Associated Press reported that nearly 50,000 customers lost power during the storm that brought high winds and rain, including some thunderstorms and mountain snow in areas of the Pacific Northwest on Monday.
Puget Sound Energy reported more than 360 outages Monday affecting over 48,000 customers in western Washington. Seattle City Light reported more than 7,200 customers without power as of about 5 p.m. Monday. That number had fallen to about 1,500 by 8 p.m.
Portland General Electric said about 10,000 customers had lost power in southwest Washington, in Portland, Ore., and surrounding areas, after earlier reports of more than 18,500 customers without power.
In eastern Washington and northern Idaho, Avista reported more than 5,000 customers were without power Monday afternoon.
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Executive Editor Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3530 or at lleach@peninsuladailynews.com.
