March Blusters in with a Wind Storm

Webcam view of First Beach near Forks

The mighty wind that UW meteorologist Cliff Mass was talking about is in full swing out at the coast. It’s gusty in Seattle as well, just take a look at the 520 webcam, but a buoy off Westport is reporting 22-foot waves. Another farther out, northwest of Aberdeen, has registered 30-foot waves. Wave heights jumped ten feet, from 20 to 30 feet, between 7 and 8 a.m. this morning.

The Tatoosh Island weather station has seen gusts of 80 mph. The aptly named Hurricane Ridge is seeing gusts of almost 100, with an average of 50 mph (I think it’s mph, the raw data doesn’t seem to indicate).

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Mass explains that this is known as a midlatitude cyclone, and while most of its force will be spent out at the coast, we are still under a National Weather Service High Wind Advisory until 2 p.m., with gusts of up to 50 mph expected.

West Seattle and Shoreline are reporting power outages already; here is Seattle City Light’s outages map, which is updated every 15 minutes. For even more timely information, follow them on Twitter. Especially if your bus runs on electricity, you might also want to keep an eye on Metro for reroutes.

Elsewhere, KIRO TV reports, “Puget Sound Energy said there were scattered outages in the Eastgate and Woodinville areas of the Eastside as well as Whatcom and Skagit counties.”