The October 2021 windstorm

What happened

October 2021 brought several rounds of wind and rain to western Washington, and the late-month storm was the strongest of them. NOAA’s offices describe a deep low offshore pushing a strong front across the region on October 24, with high wind warnings on the coast, the western Strait of Juan de Fuca and the north interior, and wind advisories around Puget Sound.

On the coast a sensor at Ocean Park gusted to 86 mph and Cape Disappointment to 74 mph; in Oregon the Yaquina Bay Bridge reached 82 mph and Clatsop Spit 74 mph. Around Puget Sound gusts were lower, about 50 to 52 mph at Boeing Field, Sea-Tac and the Tacoma Narrows and 60 mph at Paine Field.

East of the Cascades the low mixed strong winds down into the north-facing foothills. A sensor on I-84 near the Blue Mountains measured 75 mph, Heppner 67 mph and the Walla Walla airport 59 mph. In Clark County a severe thunderstorm on the front damaged trees between Woodland and Lake Merwin and cut power to more than 5,000 customers.

The storm in NOAA’s numbers

NOAA’s Storm Events Database files this storm as 7 episodes from the National Weather Service offices in Medford (MFR), Pendleton (PDT), Portland (PQR) and Seattle (SEW), dated October 23–25, 2021. Counting the six tree-relevant report types (high wind, strong wind, thunderstorm wind, ice storm, winter storm and heavy snow), the episodes hold 31 reports: 21 high wind, 9 strong wind and 1 thunderstorm wind (15 in Oregon; 16 in Washington). The highest gust among the wind reports is 75 knots (about 86 mph), measured, in NOAA’s South Coast forecast zone in Washington. Of the counted reports, 9 mention trees in the narrative.

A report is one entry per forecast zone or county per event, so one storm crossing many zones produces many reports. Gusts are in knots as NOAA records them (1 kt is about 1.15 mph).

Affected counties

34 counties have at least one counted report (17 in Oregon; 17 in Washington). The most reports touched King County, WA (4), Snohomish County, WA (4) and Clatsop County, OR (3). Most wind, ice and snow reports are filed by forecast zone, and a zone report is assigned here to every county that zone covers, so a county’s number is the reports that touched it, not separate incidents.

Damage, deaths and injuries

NOAA’s property damage field for these episodes adds up to $10,000 in nominal dollars, as entered by the NWS offices at the time and not adjusted for inflation. The event records list 2 deaths (2 direct, 0 indirect) and 0 injuries across these episodes. NOAA’s fatality file gives a location for each death it holds: “Vehicle/Towed Trailer” 2.

NOAA entered only $10,000 in property damage for this storm, all for the Clark County thunderstorm; the Seattle office left the field blank on its reports. Both deaths were direct, and the fatality file codes their location as “Vehicle/Towed Trailer”.

What it meant for trees

9 of the 31 reports mention trees. Around Redmond, Bellevue and Issaquah, trees and branches brought down wires, closed roads and landed on at least one house. Trees blocked lanes of I-90 near North Bend, one fell on a house in Bonney Lake, and large trees came down on Aurora Avenue in north Seattle, where a hospital lost power. More than 4,000 customers lost power in West Seattle alone.

Timing explains much of it. In late October, bigleaf maples and other broadleaf trees still hold most of their leaves, which gives the wind far more surface to push than in midwinter. NOAA classed most of the Puget Sound reports as strong wind, the category below high wind, yet they still produced a fatal tree failure.

What homeowners can learn from it

• Treat the first big storm of fall as the riskiest for leafy trees. Late summer and early fall are the time to remove deadwood and lighten heavy limbs; see the best time to trim trees in the Pacific Northwest.
• Forested roads are where this storm killed. Two people died when a large tree snapped and fell on their car on Preston-Fall City Road; NOAA codes both deaths as vehicle deaths.
• Photograph before anything is moved. Pictures of the tree, the stump or root plate and the damage are the evidence an insurer will want; storm damage and tree insurance in Oregon and storm damage and tree insurance in Washington explain what policies usually cover.
• If a tree is on the house, a car or a line, get people out of reach first. Then call the utility for anything touching wires; emergency tree service and fallen tree removal cover what happens next, and tree work safety explains why a crew should handle trees under tension.

Local pages: emergency tree service in Seattle and Bellevue, and Puget Sound Energy tree trimming. Before the next storm season, the tree risk checklist walks you around your own trees, and Oregon storm records and Washington storm records put this storm in context.

How this page was built

Every number above is computed from NOAA’s Storm Events bulk files for episodes 163976, 162567, 164154, 164155, 163027, 163292, 163024. Episodes were chosen by ranking all Washington and Oregon episodes from 2016 to mid-2026 on tree-relevant report counts, property damage and tree mentions, and episodes from different offices or states were merged when their narratives describe the same system on the same dates. A front on October 21 in southern Oregon is a separate system and is not counted. Several Seattle office reports are dated October 23 although the damage they describe happened on the 24th. Damage figures are NOAA’s nominal-dollar estimates and are often blank. See all storms on the storm history index and the site’s methodology.