page_title: Electricity in the Puget Sound region
section_title: Climate and weather effects
hierarchical_section_title: Electricity in the Puget Sound region / Reliability / Climate and weather effects
caption_attribution_description: English: Damage in Seattle after the Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006. Item 158605, SDOT Transportation Projects Digital Photographs (Record Series 8100-01), Seattle Municipal Archives.
context_page_description: Electricity in the Puget Sound region is a significant factor in people's lives, an enabler for the modern economy, and has a unique relationship with the region's environment.
  Suppliers include both public and private entities. Public entities include Seattle City Light and Tacoma Power, and several public utility districts. Private entities include Puget Sound Energy, formerly Puget Power. The largest suppliers are PSE with 1.1 million customers, or about a quarter of the population of the region, Seattle City Light with the city's entire population and some nearby areas totaling over 770,000 customers, and Snohomish County Public Utility District with 325,000 and Tacoma Power with 179,000.
context_section_description: Pacific Northwest windstorms, usually in the late fall and early winter, can result in power outages affecting hundreds of thousands of people at a time in the Puget Sound region. Half of Seattle was without electric power after the Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006. 463,000 were without power in the Puget Sound area and an additional 500,000 in southern British Columbia after an unusually early windstorm in late August, 2015. 750,000 people were without electric power after the January 20, 1993 Inaugural Day Storm. The Columbus Day Storm of 1962 left one million people without electric power in Oregon and Washington, including nearly all of Tacoma and much of Seattle, and complete outage at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
caption: The Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006 was the latest of many windstorms causing widespread damage to the Puget Sound region
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