More than 115,000 electricity customers across western Washington were without power at the peak of a powerful windstorm on Saturday night, November 7, 2026, as a potent cold front attached to a hurricane-force Pacific low swept through the region, toppled trees onto roads and wires, and shut all southbound lanes of Interstate 5 in Lewis County. It was the impact phase of the storm Awaaz Punjab had reported earlier on Saturday, when the National Weather Service posted high wind warnings for the Washington coast and wind advisories for Seattle and Puget Sound — and on Saturday night those warnings became dark homes, blocked highways and a long restoration night for utility crews.
Source: Emerald City Weather
The statewide outage count stood at just over 115,000 customers at 9:30 p.m. Pacific time, according to PowerOutage.com figures cited by the Emerald City Weather blog. Nearly half of those outages were in Seattle, where Seattle City Light had about 46,000 customers in the dark at around 9 p.m. By 11 p.m., KOMO News reported about 33,000 City Light customers still without power, concentrated mostly in south Seattle and West Seattle, as crews began restoring feeders where the wind had eased.
Burien and the south end: the single biggest outage
Some of the heaviest impact fell on the communities just south of Seattle. The B-Town Blog, reading Seattle City Light's outage map on Saturday night, reported at least 20,582 customers without electricity across the region at its snapshot, with outages spread through Burien, White Center, SeaTac, Tukwila and Boulevard Park, running from Three Tree Point in the south up through Boulevard Park into White Center. The largest single outage on the map affected 4,884 customers in Burien; City Light said that outage began at 8:42 p.m. on Saturday and gave an estimated restoration time of 2:53 a.m. on Sunday, November 8. The utility listed the cause as under investigation.
In West Seattle, the first outage reports came from the Arbor Heights neighbourhood at about 8:44 p.m., and by 8:46 p.m. City Light's map already showed nearly 5,000 customers out, according to West Seattle Blog reporting summarised overnight. Residents reported hearing a transformer or electrical fuse explode during the strongest burst of wind and rain, and by 10:06 p.m. the citywide City Light count had fallen from the 40,000 range into the 30,000 range as the front moved through, though outages continued into a third hour.
Trees down on Interstate 5 in Lewis County
The storm also hit the region's main north-south highway. In Lewis County, in the South Sound, winds brought trees down across the southbound lanes of Interstate 5 near the U.S. 12 interchange, at milepost 68. The Washington State Patrol said multiple vehicles were involved in crashes there and that all southbound lanes were blocked on Saturday night; the patrol did not give the extent of any injuries. For the many Punjabi truck drivers who run the I-5 corridor between Seattle, Tacoma and Portland, the closure was the kind of overnight disruption that forces detours onto slower state routes in the middle of a storm.
How strong was the wind?
The coast took the worst of it, as forecast. Hoquiam recorded hours of gusts over 50 to 60 mph, with multiple gusts over 65 mph and a peak gust of 69 mph. Across the Puget Sound lowlands, gusts reached 40 to 50 mph: Sea-Tac Airport recorded 46 mph, Everett 48 mph and Bellevue 50 mph. Forecasters said a mild October had left many trees still leafy, which made limbs — and in places whole trees — more likely to come down on wires even at advisory-level winds.
High Wind Warnings stayed in effect until 4 a.m. Sunday along the Washington coast, for south winds of 25 to 35 mph gusting to 60 mph, where the National Weather Service in Seattle warned that widespread power outages were expected. Wind Advisories covered Seattle, the Eastside, Everett, the San Juan Islands and the Pierce and southern King County lowlands until 4 a.m., for gusts of 45 to 50 mph.
Background: the second storm in a series
Saturday's storm was the second in a run of Pacific systems, and the stronger of the two. Friday's storm had already produced a 58 mph gust at Hoquiam and 48 mph at Everett. Saturday's parent low, rated hurricane-force on the NOAA Ocean Prediction Center's surface forecast at 970 millibars off the British Columbia coast, made landfall well to the north in central British Columbia, but its cold front was strong enough that the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center issued a rare-for-the-Northwest mesoscale discussion about a brief, intense burst of wind as the front crossed the coast and the Olympic Peninsula, and placed the peninsula in a Level 1 of 5 severe-wind risk. The system also counted as an atmospheric river, with 2 to 4 inches of combined rain possible in the Olympics and the North Cascades.
What happens next
The National Weather Service expected wind and rain to taper off on Sunday morning, with a relatively calm pattern into Monday before another pair of systems brings more rain — though not, on current forecasts, Saturday's winds — later in the week. The danger on the coast is not over with the wind: a high surf warning runs through Sunday, with breakers up to 33 feet possible on the south Washington coast and seas of 22 to 26 feet on the northern and Grays Harbor coasts, and forecasters warned of sneaker waves that can dislodge beach logs. Seattle City Light updates its outage map every five minutes; customers can report an outage at 206-684-3000, and the utility advises anyone who finds a downed power line to stay at least 30 feet away and call 911. Restoration estimates will firm up as crews assess damage in daylight on Sunday.
Sources: Emerald City Weather (storm and outage reporting, citing PowerOutage.com and the Washington State Patrol); The B-Town Blog (Seattle City Light outage map, Burien); KOMO News (11 p.m. City Light count); West Seattle Blog reporting; National Weather Service offices in Seattle and Portland and WeatherBoy (warnings, gusts and surf outlook).