Saturday's windstorm put about 9,000 Grays Harbor PUD customers in the dark, and gusts hit 69 mph at Hoquiam. When the power comes back on, most houses just go back to normal. Some do not, and the first day or two after an outage is when the damage shows itself. Here is what to check, what can wait, and what should get an electrician out this week.
First walk-through, once the lights are back
Walk the house room by room and run the big appliances one at a time. A fridge, freezer, or furnace that hums, clicks, and never starts is telling you something.
Look at the lights. Flickering that was not there before the storm is a symptom, not a quirk, especially if it spreads across rooms or gets worse when an appliance starts.
Check every GFCI outlet (kitchen, bathrooms, garage, outside) and press test, then reset. One that will not reset after the storm may have done its job during a surge, or may be seeing water where water should not be.
Feel the breaker panel door and the breakers themselves. Warm is a warning. So is a breaker that trips again right after you reset it, or will not stay reset at all.
Call an electrician this week if you see any of these
A breaker that will not reset, or trips again with almost nothing running.
Flickering or dimming that started with the storm and has not settled.
A burning smell, buzzing, or crackling from the panel, an outlet, or a switch.
Outlets or switches that got wet, or any water in the panel itself.
One part of the house dead while the rest works, with no tripped breaker to explain it.
Restoration is hard on a house. When power returns to a whole neighborhood at once, voltage can surge, and older wiring and tired breakers are where that stress lands. A problem that shows up the week after a storm is usually the storm's problem, and it rarely gets better on its own.
What can wait, and what to watch
A single GFCI that tripped and resets cleanly is the system working. A clock that needs resetting and a router that needs a reboot are just an outage being an outage. What you are watching for over the next few days is anything new that stays: lights that keep flickering, a breaker that trips a second time, an appliance that runs differently than it did last week. New and staying is the pattern to act on.
If you ran a generator
Run it outdoors only, well away from windows, and let it cool before refueling. Carbon monoxide is the quiet risk in every outage. Never plug a generator into a house outlet to backfeed the panel: it can send power out onto lines that crews are working on. If you found yourself improvising cords through a window this time, a transfer switch or interlock is the fix before the next storm, and our standby generator guide covers the options.
Storm season is just starting
Saturday was the first big one, and Grays Harbor storm season runs through March. The checks above take ten minutes, and they are the same after every outage this winter. If something on the call-this-week list showed up at your house, call or email Triple Tree Electric and we will take a look.
Triple Tree Electric: (360) 470-3782 - sales@tripletreeelectric.com