The bomb cyclone that left at least two people dead in the Seattle area did far less damage in this corner of the Olympic Peninsula.

The Jefferson County Public Utility District provided live updates throughout the day Nov. 19, starting with an outage at approximately 6:50 p.m. that affected 2,366 PUD customers throughout the central and upper county.

At 7:45 p.m., the PUD confirmed this outage spanned Marrowstone Island, Oak Bay Road, and Center Road southward to Dabob Road and Coyle, with a number of smaller outages across the county, including Cook Avenue in Port Townsend, affecting 153 customers, and 56 customers along F Street in uptown Port Townsend.

By 9:45 p.m., the PUD reported the outage spanning from Marrowstone to Coyle had been restored, after the cause was determined to be multiple tree limbs on the lines, which forced the substation protections to kick-in.

By 12:15 a.m. on Nov. 20, crews had restored power to the 240 remaining customers on Cook Avenue and F Street.

Jefferson County PUD Digital Communications Specialist Jameson Hawn told The Leader afterward that the utility had managed to minimize the impacts of the storm by undertaking major tree-trimming operations starting at least a year before.

“We’d shored up our lines as much as possible,” Hawn said. “Fortunately, we wound up dealing with one of the best case scenarios.”

Hawn pointed out that, by definition, the PUD can never know exactly how many crew members will be needed to respond to any given storm event, since it’s up to “the whims of the trees,” but the utility had two full line crews at its disposal Nov. 19, with the ability to contract outside crews through mutual aid from other parts of the state.

“Right now, our crews are available to other utilities across the state, to offset their emergencies if needed,” Hawn said.

Hawn dispelled concerns voiced by some observers who saw bright flashes during the storm and thought that transformers were getting taken out of commission. What they were witnessing, he said, was protective cutoff measures going into effect, reducing the PUD’s potential repair and replacement expenses.

“It took a while to identify the multiple source locations of the outages, but because of our previous preventive measures, the most our crews had to deal with were large branches on the lines, as opposed to entire trees,” Hawn said. “It still took some time to restore full power, but the fixes were relatively easy.”

After the PUD dealt with relatively few significant storm events in 2023, Hawn acknowledged such storm activity had picked up in the area during 2024.