tFirst storm of the winter season hits the islands

This past weekend saw the arrival of a major storm with wind and snow.

Friday night, big winds came in over Orcas and one tree caused a power outage in Cormorant Bay. According to Tom Shaner, manager of operations for OPALCO, there were five outages on Saturday throughout the island caused by wind, limbs and trees. Three transformer overloads (people overusing power and a malfunctioning transformer) have been fixed except for one.

There was a fire out on Channel Road and power had to be disconnected to this residence. The wind caused more problems on Saturday, when it took down a tree near the Youngrens’ property and power had to be re-routed from two power substations. There were two isolated outages as well (one which was a power outage in the rest room of a state park) but the number of homes affected was minimal. OPALCO crews began debris clean up on Monday.

On Saturday night, the first snow of the season arrived. Much to the delight of children and cold weather lovers, it was just enough to play in but did not cause significant driving delays.

On Monday, Dec. 15 two large trees fell on the home of Tom and Donna Wildman-Gossett on Orcas Rd. Amazingly, damage to the house was minimal and no one was injured. As of press time, a third tree was close to falling, despite being secured by ropes.