The National Weather Service has issued a wind advisory for the Portland-Vancouver area as multiple power outages crop up Thursday morning.
An outage at about 9:30 a.m. near the Port of Vancouver affected 763 Clark Public Utilities customers. Most people had their power restored within a half-hour, said utilities spokeswoman Erica Erland.
“I don’t have the cause confirmed, although it appears we’re seeing scattered wind-related outages right now,” Erland said in an email Thursday morning.
An outage around Northeast 159th Street and 72nd Avenue at the same time affected 102 customers, according to an outage map.
And a tree branch caused a power outage that affected 164 customers near the Vancouver Mall earlier Thursday, shortly before forecasters issued the wind advisory.
The outage was first reported at 8:39 a.m. It was caused by a tree branch touching power lines, Erland said.
Power was restored to that area at 9:22 a.m.
There were two other outages affecting nearly 40 customers in Vancouver, but those were listed on the outage map as planned maintenance. By late Thursday afternoon, all the outages had been dealt with. The utility’s outage map said nearly 1,900 customers were affected throughout the morning.
The weather service issued the wind advisory about 9:30 a.m. for Vancouver and various Clark County communities. The affected communities included Vancouver, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, Washougal, Yacolt and Amboy.
The advisory was set to remain in effect until 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon, but it was canceled sooner. The county experienced south winds between 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 45 mph, forecasters said.
“Winds of this strength may bring down some tree limbs and cause minor property damage and isolated power outages,” the wind advisory said.
Jerzy Shedlock: 360-735-4534; jerzy.shedlock@columbian.com; Twitter: twitter.com/jerzyms
