More rain headed to Whatcom County after winds whipped area

Wind gusts as strong as 81 mph knocked down trees, took out power lines and blew trash and recycling all over neighborhoods in Whatcom County on Sunday, Dec. 6.

Puget Sound Energy crews were still working Monday to restore power to hundreds of customers, after thousands lost power during the high winds. While most of the major outages were fixed Sunday night and early Monday, more than 40 separate outages were reported as of Monday morning. PSE expected to fix most by 5 p.m. Monday.

The National Weather Service reported extremely strong gusts in western Whatcom County on Sunday: 81 mph in Ferndale and 68 mph in Bellingham.

The wind died down Monday, but the National Weather Service issued a wind advisory for most of Tuesday. South winds of 20 to 30 mph are expected with gusts to 50 mph, far less than the damaging ones of Sunday.

The band of tropical moisture moving through Washington comes with warmer temperatures — expect highs in the low to mid-50s — and lots of rain. Heavier rain is expected Tuesday, with the NWS predicting Bellingham will get slightly less than 2 inches of rain from these storms by Wednesday morning. That could lead to some street flooding during the heavier downpours.

Five to 11 inches of rain are expected in the mountains through Tuesday night. That might push the Nooksack River to flood in places Tuesday or Wednesday.

The NWS also says the landslide risk is increasing because of saturated soil in the region.

Rain is expected to taper off to showers in most areas by Wednesday. High temperatures will drop to the mid-40s in the lowlands. The lower temperatures will bring snow back to the mountains.

This story was originally published December 7, 2015 at 9:51 AM with the headline "More rain headed to Whatcom County after winds whipped area."