Snohomish County residents spent Wednesday sweeping up after a freak windstorm on Tuesday left half the county without power and knocked hundreds of trees onto houses, cars and roads.
As many as 18,000 Snohomish County homes were still without power on Wednesday afternoon in the aftermath of winds up to 55 mph that blew in suddenly from the northwest.
Power was knocked out to about 150,000 people, making it the second-largest outage in Snohomish County PUD history, spokesman Mike Thorne said. That number steadily dropped as 48 crews worked around the clock to bring power back on.
More than 500 trees fell on roads throughout the county, including two that fell across two lanes of southbound I-5 in the south Everett-Lynnwood area, delaying traffic for up to four hours.
Many traffic lights were still dark on Wednesday morning, causing major delays, especially on Highway 9.
But a two-hour electrical outage turned into a boon for the Everett Food Bank. A Safeway store had to discard 5,400 pounds of milk, yogurt and cheese that were in coolers when the outage occurred.
"Obviously, with the power being out a short time, there was no significant damage done," said Virginia Sprague, program director for the Everett Food Bank. "The stores would not give us any product where the integrity is threatened at all."
Elsewhere, lightning struck Debi Sprauge’s favorite cherry tree, splitting it down the middle.
"I saw the lightning and didn’t think anything about it," said Sprauge, who lives on a busy street in Silver Lake. In the morning, "it was like a big hatchet split it in half."
She said she was thankful the tree fell on her flatbed truck and not her home. "If it was turned the other way, it would have taken out my bedroom and my living room," she said.
The wind snapped the tops of two tall cedar trees at Brian Coffman’s Snohomish home, crushing his new shed and a lawn mower. "All of a sudden, I heard this snap, and they were down (on the ground) in half of a second," he said.
Sue Sullivan said an alder tree blocked her road in Snohomish. In the evening, small branches were flying in the air as if it had been raining, she said. "It was kind of eerie."
The power was out from 4 to 11 p.m., Sullivan said. But that didn’t cause many hassles, she said. "It’s fun. It’s an adventure."
About 50 county roads remained closed Wednesday, said Peter Hahn, director of the county’s Public Works Department. The county’s solid waste transfer station at Cathcart also was closed.
Firefighters in Snohomish County Fire District 4 in Snohomish responded to 54 storm calls in five hours, Chief Bob Merritt said. "There were trees into houses, trees into cars and power lines down," Merritt said. "It was a long night."
Around communities in the county:
Schuyler Thorpe’s family watched the storm rip through their south Everett neighborhood.
"The top halves of (two) trees pretty much snapped like twigs," Thorpe said, adding that his family spent the night with only candles for light. Power didn’t come back on until about 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Reporters Victor Balta, Pamela Brice, Brian Kelly, Cathy Logg, Scott Morris, Yoshi Nohara, David Olson, Sharon Salyer, Katherine Schiffner and Eric Stevick contributed to this report. Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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