Another windy night coming to the Puget Sound area, with the National Weather Service forecasting high winds again for the North Sound (especially Whidbey Island, Whatcom County and Skagit County) with gusts of 60 mph, and strong winds gusting to 40 mph or so for the rest of the area.
Pretty amazing to see windy weather four times in a single week, but that's life in our neck of the woods during November. In fact, November 19 is, historically, the day most likely to have rain -- with rain roughly 80 percent of the time on that date during the last century. Check out this nice chart on the KOMO-TV website for more stats.
So far in this stormy week, PSE's system has held out pretty well, with mostly short-term, scattered neighborhood outages despite winds that have gusted as high as 61 mph in areas we serve, with Bellingham and Whidbey Naval Air Station posting the highest wind speeds. Even higher gusts have been reported in the Cascades and Olympics, with Hurricane Ridge on the Olympic Peninsula and Crystal Mountain ski area near Mount Rainier both clocking winds of more than 100 mph.
Why is our system holding out? I'd credit three things: 1) smart investments in infrastructure and maintenance; 2) great people who are well-trained and know what to do, and 3) a little luck.
As far as the investments, we've been building a more robust system, including new substations, transmission lines, and more undergrounding of local distribution power lines. That all adds up to better reliability, with projects underway across Western Washington. On windy Whidbey Island, for example, we've put in some of the most modern equipment around, and this week it's been paying off in better reliability and fewer outages. Tree-trimming is a big year-round effort, with Whidbey Island again providing an example of how weathering the storm starts with being ahead of the storm -- trimming trees in the summer sun, and not when the wind blows.
When it comes to people, our team started having "mock storms" back in those sunny days of September, and everyday we have more than 130 power line repair crews, nearly 200 damage assessors (double what we had in 2006) and 25 tree crews ready to go.
And of course a little luck! The winds have been strong, but not quite where they begin to topple trees in big numbers. So far most gusts have been below 60 mph, and that's roughly the breaking point for our majestic Northwest timber.
As the wind blows tonight, keep your fingers crossed the gusts don't get too strong, and take a moment to breathe easier knowing PSE was working to build up our energy delivery system and have train up our people to be ready.
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