By David Haerle

The Daily World

Gusty winds on Monday posed some challenges for the Grays Harbor PUD, but crews responded quickly to deal with numerous, scattered wind-caused outages.

With gusts at Bowerman Field in Hoquiam measuring around 35 mph for several hours, the conditions caused “a couple of downed power lines” and several other scattered line-related outages throughout the county, according to Ian Cope, the PUD’s communications director.

Among the outages, one in the East County affected nearly 800 customers and another in Aberdeen cut power to more than 350 residents.

“For the most part, crews were able to go out Monday and restore power relatively quickly,” said Cope.

The windy weather continued for a while on Tuesday with a gust of 33 mph recorded at Bowerman just before noon.

Another likely wind-caused downed power line caused an outage in Ocean Shores on Tuesday afternoon, impacting around 1,540 customers. Another in Malone affected roughly 1,000 PUD customers.

But those winds were expected to die down overnight just in time for the hottest days of the week. The forecast calls for a high of 89 in Aberdeen on Wednesday and 90 on Thursday.

A switch from offshore flow to light low level onshore flow will allow temps to cool some Friday or Saturday, according to the the NWS, but temperatures look to remain above normal.

With the lack of air conditioners to switch on in this region, Cope says those high temperatures shouldn’t really cause any issues for PUD customers.

“Western Washington is a winter-peaking region,” Cope said of electricity demand. “Our strain comes from heating houses, not cooling houses. … I don’t expect there will be any real strain on the load for those days.”