WHIDBEY ISLAND, Wash. — A new storm that hit Whidbey Island Monday morning drew many storm watchers to the island’s beaches.

“Some of these waves come five or six feet high,” Paul Farler told KOMO News from the safety of the driver’s seat of his truck.

KOMO News caught up with Farler while he was on the beach in the middle of this latest storm.

Even at low tide, the waves crashed on Moran Beach.

The American flag on a beach house there looked like it had been heavily starched, flapping in the wind at all. Getting out of the car on any of those beaches came with a very tight grip on the car door as the wind tried to take it from you.

Just standing outside in the wind, KOMO News saw many people blown away, trying to hold up their phones for photos and videos, especially at West Beach in Deception Pass State Park. Here Farler told KOMO News that he was really impressed by the size of the waves.

“The parking lot is filling up with foam and logs and everything,” Farler said. Anyone driving on the island sometimes had to hold on to the steering wheel, with the wind acting to propel the vehicles.

“I saw some waves that were at least eight feet, you know, like I say, I’m not here all the time during storms. But this is as big as we’ve ever seen,” Jim Burton told KOMO News. He said he was a surfer and had certainly seen and surfed some massive waves, but nothing like this. He drove from his home in Anacortes to Deception Pass to witness the power of mother nature here.

He had his dog with him, which he said tried to get out of the truck when he parked it. Burton said his dog really likes the water, but this time he kept it safe in his truck. Park Rangers atDeception Pass I stood on patrol for everyone’s safety here while we watched the storm.

Winds here have held steady at 30 miles per hour or higher, with gusts near 60 miles per hour.

Number of Puget Sound Energy customers are losing power it climbed from just a few hundred in the early afternoon to over 17,000 at one point later in the day.

“I hope nobody’s on the water today,” Burton told KOMO News.

He may have been talking about recreational boaters, but rough seas and high winds forced Washington State Ferries to cancel sailings between Whidbey Island and Port Townsend.