East Pierce County took some of the hardest hits during Tuesday’s bomb cyclone, but the rest of the county still has a few leaves on its trees.
Thank you, Mount Rainier.
The 14,411-foot mountain most likely protected the bulk of Pierce County from the storm that lead to the deaths of at least two people further north, according to the National Weather Service in Seattle.
Enumclaw, in King County, saw a wind gust of 74 miles per hour. At 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, the city had more than 1,000 customers without power. Carbonado, Wilkeson, Eatonville and Orting were also digging out from down trees, suffering from power outages and canceling school in some cases.
Shadow effect
Meanwhile, winds were mild as they blew through Tacoma and surrounding areas. Wind gusts at the Tacoma Narrows Airport were only in the low 20-miles-per-hour range, according to the NWS.
Although the bomb cyclone was centered in the Pacific Ocean with its distinctive whirlpool shape, winds blew into Puget Sound from the southeast, according to NWS meteorologist Maddie Kristell.
“Another nature of easterly winds is, they definitely get a boost as they come down our side of the Cascades,” she said. “And it could have also just been they didn’t necessarily have quite enough momentum to continue to carry themselves in through Tacoma.”
The center of the cyclone stayed in the Pacific.
“We would have seen much more significant impacts if it hadn’t,” Kristell said.
Rainfall was minimal — about 1/10-inch — in Tacoma, she said.
Eastern Pierce communities fared worse in the storm because they were closer and more well-aligned with some of the Cascade gaps, Kristell said.
“That’s definitely reflected in the power outage maps that we’re seeing in the east Pierce lowlands,” she said.
Wind gusts on Washington’s coast were in the 40s and 50-miles-per-hour range with an inch of rain falling overnight, according to the NWS.
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