Strong overnight wind gusts knock out power for thousands

Strong overnight wind gusts knocked out power in Thurston County, according to National Weather Service and Puget Sound Energy data.

From about midnight to 3 a.m. Sunday, Olympia Regional Airport recorded wind gusts from the south of 30 to 40 miles per hour. A gust of 54 miles per hour was reported about 3:05 a.m., which triggered an outage in the Lacey area and elsewhere.

Power was restored in the Lacey area about an hour later, but other parts of the county were still waiting for power to be restored Sunday. Gusty winds continued to be recorded at the airport.

As of 9 a.m. Sunday, Puget Sound Energy was reporting 4,300 outages in the region, including in Thurston County, where hundreds were still without power.

It was the second major power outage in the county in recent days, according to PSE.

As many as 12,000 PSE customers were without power Friday morning. Those outages were attributed to equipment failure that was not weather related, The Olympian reported.

Equipment failure leaves 12,000 without power Friday in Thurston County