Big winds, heavy rain hit Peninsula

November 16th, 2006 - 5:43am
KONP News

(Port Angeles) -- Officials are tallying up the damage from yesterday's big storm that blew through the North Olympic Peninsula. High winds buffeted the coastal areas and eastern end of the county beginning early in the morning. By midmorning those winds were hitting the greater Port Angeles area. Numerous trees were knocked down. About 12-thousand customers in the Clallam County Public Utility District customers were without power overnight. Dispatcher Quimby Moon says all areas west of Port Angeles to the Pacific Ocean were knocked out because of an outage on a Bonneville Power Administration line. The communities effected include Clallam Bay, Joyce, Forks, LaPush, Neah Bay and Sekiu. Moon says crews are working to restore pockets of outages west of Port Angeles to Joyce, Monroe Road, O'Brien Road area and east of Sequim. No estimate on when power will be fully retored to all customers. The Deer Park, Monroe and Mount Pleasant Road areas had a lot of debris come down. At one point, officials were only letting people with essential travel needs use Deer Park Road as crews tried to keep up with falling trees. Highway 112 is still closed west of Joyce to Burnt Mountain Road due to trees on the road. The Hood Canal Floating Bridge was reopened again last night after being closed most the day yesterday due to high winds. Winds gusted to 80 miles an hour in Neah Bay. A weather spotter east of Sequim tells us he measured a gust of 75 miles an hour. Ediz Hook had 52 mile an hour sustained winds at one point. Hurricane Ridge reported a 78 mile an hour gust during the storm.
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The forecast is calling for cloudy skies and rain showers today with little wind. Another storm is expected to hit the area again over the weekend.