Seattle City Light restores power to most customers after Saturday storm
High winds and rain left nearly 40,000 residents without electricity overnight, but utilities report rapid recovery by midday Sunday.
By Marco Ortega ·
High wind gusts and heavy rain swept through western Washington on Saturday night, knocking out power to tens of thousands of residents. By Sunday morning, restoration crews had brought service back to the majority of affected homes, though thousands remain in the dark.
Seattle City Light reported that 6,783 customers in King County were still without power as of 10 a.m. Sunday. That figure represents a sharp drop from the roughly 30,000 outages recorded just before midnight. By 11:30 a.m., the utility’s outage map showed the number had fallen further to 4,889.
Puget Sound Energy tracked 21,656 customers without service during the peak of the storm. As of 10 a.m. Sunday, that count decreased to 7,713. By 11 a.m., the utility reported the number had dropped to 5,198.
Neighboring utilities also saw rapid improvements. Snohomish County’s outage map displayed 449 customers without power, down from a high of 9,106. By 11:30 a.m., that figure fell to 222. Tacoma Public Utilities stated that 1,802 customers were affected around midnight, but the number decreased to 13 by midday.
Seattle City Light said its work has restored power for about 80% of the customers initially impacted. The utility stated it is sending additional crews to the remaining sites to restore power safely and quickly. "We are sending additional crews to the remaining outage sites and working to safely restore power as soon as possible," the utility said.
The storm caused concentrated damage in specific neighborhoods. Seattle City Light’s map indicates that Capitol Hill, particularly the area between Madison and Republican streets, bears the brunt of the remaining outages. In South Seattle, areas such as Burien continue to experience disruptions.
At one point on Saturday, Seattle City Light was actively addressing 143 different outages across the city. Video footage captured by FOX 13 showed power lines, streetlights, signs, and trees lying in the street on Dexter Avenue. The storm also affected traffic infrastructure, leaving some lights out and creating hazardous driving conditions.
Residents were advised to treat downed lines as live and to use flashlights rather than candles to reduce fire risk. To keep food cold, officials suggested keeping refrigerator doors closed, noting that an unopened fridge maintains temperature for about four hours and a full freezer for 48 hours. They also recommended using battery-powered radios for updates and manually opening electronic garage doors if power does not return soon.
