Hundreds of Puget Sound Energy customers remain in the dark. The largest outage is in Woodinville. The power has already been out for more than six hours.
The people who live in this small swath of Woodinville say they are accustomed to power outages.
But this one has interrupted their Saturday plans.
This is a common sight in this neighborhood not far from Woodinville high school – power out as far as the eye can see.
“This particular neighborhood is on a really unique little wedge,” said Doug Shepard. “And we lose power fairly often. And so, when it does go out, it’s like ‘here we go again.’ "
Shepard has lived here for 17 years. He says they have endured several power outages.
“Typically, not long,” said Shepard. “We have been out for 10 days straight before. But that’s not the normal. Normally, it’s, you know, just a few hours here and there. Hopefully, that will be just a few hours this time around as well.”
Woodinville Fire identified this as the culprit—trees that fell into power lines at about noon on the Woodinville Snohomish Road. The foliage smoldered, but firefighters were able to handle it quickly. They tell us the rainy weather has made some trees more vulnerable.
It was a different story some 20 miles away in Edmonds. Several people made their way to the waterfront, and got a treat seeing orcas swimming in Puget Sound.
“Fifteen, 20 minutes ago, they were right out here,” said John Burrows, who grew up in Edmonds. “And then we watched them go this way and then that way. We kind of lost them because they were quite a ways out.”
Closer to shore were some divers of the human kind – they say this chilly fall day was ideal for being underwater.
“When I was scuba diving, there was quite a bit of surge under there,” said Vanessa Woo, a Seattle diver. “So, you could really feel the waves taking you away. But it was still really great visibility, seeing the orcas today. There’s harbor seals out there, too. So, it’s great.”
Power was restored Saturday night.