I had other doors open outside and and I ran outside in the storm to close them. I got soaked even though I was only outside for a minute. I never seen it rain so hard here. I also noticed the reason for the lost of power. Several trees in the front yard were snapped off and went down on the power lines.
The top third or more of this tree snapped off. It is located near the house above my well shed. Fortunately the wind blew the tree away from the house and garage. Other than the power lines the fence is the only other thing trashed.
This is the very large tree in the front yard by the road. I really liked this tree and am sad to lose it.
Just after the storm and the view again this morning.
The wind blew this humongous tree a good distance from the tree stump! The top of this tree also hit the power lines!
The power pole by the road was broken when the power lines in my yard were taken down.
The electric company worked all night on replacing the pole. They arrived at 11:45 pm. After I explained everything and showed them the damage, etc., they left to go get a pole and more equipment. The pole was in place by 4 am and their work was done by 5 am. We (and all others along the road) finally got power back a little before 10 am this morning.
All the horses and cattle are ok. From my initial survey it appears I lost six more large trees in the pastures with more trees partially snapped off.
I have to get gasoline for my chainsaw. Tammy and I have our work cut out for us!
The news from the Daily-Interlake paper about the storm was this:
More than 10,600 members of Flathead Electric Co-op lost power Saturday evening after a brief but violent storm ripped through the valley.
“At about 6 p.m. we had this big storm come in from the southeast and we had trees through transmission lines.” said Wendy Ostrom-Price, the power company’s public relations officer.
Ostrom-Price said that all of Flathead Electric’s crews began working as soon as the storm hit. Despite that full mobilization, however, she said some members would be without power through the night and into Sunday.
The bulk of the outages were in Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls, while Evergreen was the hardest hit.
“When storms come through like this, it’s best if you don’t have to travel because law enforcement officers and the crews are dealing with trees down everywhere,” she said. “If you see a line on the road, avoid it. Don’t cross it. Consider all downed lines live and energized.”
According to Dan Zumpfe with the National Weather Service in Missoula, Kalispell received .77 inches of rain in just 22 minutes Saturday evening, with only trace amounts falling after 6:40. Of that, .64 inches fell in just 10 minutes.
That pushes the total amount of rainfall in June to a new record at 5.73 inches. The prior record was set in 2005 with 5.66 inches.
“It was a very strong thunderstorm,” Zumpfe said. “The top wind speed gusts that we found, at Glacier Park International Airport, were 61 miles per hour.”
Here are the weather stats from when the storm hit at 6 pm Saturday.
Look at how freaky the wind was for the 22 minutes the storm lasted.
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