Power outages affect thousands in Seattle, Snohomish County

Crews with Seattle City Light worked to restore power all over Seattle Sunday afternoon. As of 11:30 p.m. on Sunday, about 120 customers were affected by outages.

But as of 5:45 p.m. Sunday, about 5,700 customers were affected, mostly in South Seattle, east of Interstate 5 and near Lake Washington, the Seattle City Light outage page reported. The utility also confirmed the outages in a post on its X, formerly known as Twitter, page.

The large outage in North Seattle has been restored. South Seattle/Columbia City continues to have outages affecting 5,600 customers. For updates, visit outage map at https://t.co/ijUJXHhsDH

— Seattle City Light (@SEACityLight) February 26, 2024

Earlier Sunday afternoon, over 4,400 customers affected were located in North Seattle.

Crews are responding to outages in North Seattle affecting over 4,400 customers. An estimated time of restoration is yet to be determined. We also have several scattered outages in South Seattle. Follow along on our outage map at: https://t.co/ijUJXHhsDH pic.twitter.com/Mt3vZPeyBz

— Seattle City Light (@SEACityLight) February 26, 2024

More than 7,000 were impacted by Snohomish County power outages

Just 371 customers were without power in Snohomish County as of 11:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to the Snohomish Public Utility District (PUD). There has been a significant decline of customers experiencing outages since 10 p.m. At 11 p.m., 1,155 customers were without power. Before that, 1,770 customers experienced outages at 10:05 p.m. That’s a sharp drop from about 3,400 customers who were without power in Snohomish County as of a few minutes before that at 10 p.m.

On Sunday evening, the 8 p.m. number sat at about 1,770 customers, which stayed relatively steady with 6 p.m. number which was at 1,550. That was a significant jump at the time as the number was down to about 560 at around 5:45 p.m.

The number of outages was as high as 7,200 as recently as 3:30 p.m. At 3:55 p.m., the number was closer to 5,900. At 4 p.m., the number of outages fell to about 3,600. Later, at around 4:20 p.m., the outage total was around 2,500. At 4:30 p.m., more than 1,480 customers were reported to not have power.

The outages began around 10 a.m., according to KIRO 7. The numbers had been growing steadily for several hours until crews began resolving the existing issues.

Most of the current outages — about 140 — are now being reported around Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace, according to the Snohomish PUD outage map. The utility also reported smaller outages on Camano Island (around 85) and around Jordan (about 70).

On Sunday evening, close to 1,300 outages were reported on Camano Island.

On Sunday afternoon, outages affected thousands of customers around Silver Firs, located between Mill Creek and Everett.

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Crews remain active in working to restore electricity to homes in the areas where service has been disrupted.

The utility asks customers who do not see their outage on the outage map to report it here or call the Automated Outage Reporting Line at: 425-783-1001 (Toll-free: 1-877-783-1001).

Snohomish PUD also recommends all customers stay at least 30 feet away from all fallen power lines and they should assume those lines they may see are live and dangerous. Users can report fallen power lines at 425-783-1001 as well. If if the situation is life threatening, call 911.

Steve Coogan is the lead editor of My Northwest. You can read more of his stories here. Follow Steve on X, formerly known as Twitter, here and email him here.