Storm Season Is Coming: An Electrician's Prep List for Northwest Homes

Why Northwest outages are an electrical problem, not just a utility problem

West of the Cascades, outages mostly come from trees and saturated ground: a winter of rain loosens root systems, then a windstorm drops limbs across distribution lines. When the utility re-energizes a section of grid, the power that comes back is rarely clean — switching surges and voltage swings ride in with it, and that's when marginal equipment in your house fails.

So storm prep has two halves. One is making sure the equipment attached to your house survives the storm itself. The other is making sure the restoration — the moment power slams back on — doesn't take out the electronics the outage spared.

The pre-season walkthrough: what to look at while it's dry

Start outside. The service mast (the pipe rising to your roofline), the weatherhead on top of it, and the meter base on the wall are the parts of the service you own — the utility owns the wire coming to them. If the mast is rusted through, pulling away from the wall, or has a tree limb resting on the drop, that's a repair to schedule now. After a limb tears the mast off the house, you're paying storm rates and waiting in line behind everyone else it happened to.

Inside, open the panel door — just the door, not the cover — and look and listen. Rust streaks or water staining inside a panel mean moisture is getting into the service somewhere above it, and that's worth a professional look before the wet season, not after. A buzzing breaker or a warm spot on the panel face are the same category: cheap to diagnose in September, expensive to discover during a storm.

• Service mast straight, secured to the structure, no rust-through
• No limbs on or near the service drop — call the utility about trimming near their wire, never do it yourself
• Meter base sealed, no gaps where water can track in
• No rust or water staining inside the panel
• Outdoor receptacle covers close properly and GFCIs pass their test button
• Exterior fixtures and connections tight — wind finds every loose fitting

Surge protection: the restoration is the dangerous part

A whole-home surge protective device mounts at the panel and clamps voltage spikes before they reach branch circuits. It's the single most cost-effective piece of storm hardening we install: modern homes are full of boards and processors — furnace controls, heat pump inverters, induction ranges, garage door openers — and any of them can be taken out by the surge that rides in when power is restored.

Panel-mounted protection and point-of-use protection do different jobs, and you want both. The panel device knocks a large surge down to a level the house wiring tolerates; a quality plug-in protector at the equipment absorbs what's left. A power strip with no surge rating is neither — it's just more outlets.

If we're already at your panel for other work, adding an SPD is usually a short add-on. As a standalone visit it's still one of the smaller jobs we do — ask for a bid and weigh it against replacing one heat pump control board.

Backup power, done in a way that won't hurt anyone

There is exactly one wrong way to connect a portable generator, and every storm someone does it: backfeeding the house through a dryer or range receptacle with a double-male cord. That energizes the utility lines outside your house and can kill the lineworker trying to restore your neighborhood. It's illegal, and no part of it is an exaggeration.

The right portable setup is an inlet box on the outside of the house feeding an interlock or transfer switch at the panel. The interlock physically prevents the generator breaker and the main from being on at the same time. It's a modest, permitted job, and once it's in, connecting the generator is one cord and two breaker flips — something any adult in the house can do safely in the dark.

A standby generator takes it further: it starts itself, transfers automatically, and runs on natural gas or propane so there's no fuel to store. We're an authorized Generac dealer and service company, so we handle sizing, installation, and the annual maintenance that keeps the warranty valid. We covered whether a standby unit pays back at resale in a separate post — for storm prep, the honest summary is that portables with an interlock cover most houses well, and standby units earn their keep where outages are frequent, medical equipment is involved, or nobody home wants to manage cords and fuel.

• Never backfeed through a receptacle — no double-male cords, ever
• Portable generators run outside only, 20+ feet from the house, exhaust pointed away
• Working CO alarms on every level — restoration season is CO season
• Store fuel legally and rotate it; stale gas is the top reason portables fail to start
• Run the generator under load for ten minutes each fall, before you need it

During and after the outage

When the power drops, unplug the sensitive loads — computers, TVs, anything with a compressor — and leave one lamp on so you know when service returns. That protects your equipment from the restoration surge and keeps the initial load on the grid lower, which genuinely helps the utility bring sections back faster.

Know which problems belong to whom. Lines down in the street or a dead neighborhood: the utility. Your mast torn off, your meter base damaged, half your house dead while the neighbors have power, or a burning smell from the panel: that's an electrician, and the burning smell is a right-now call. If a breaker won't hold after power is restored, it's telling you something on that circuit was damaged — don't keep resetting it.

Common questions