Windstorm rocks valley

A storm with unusually strong winds passed through Flathead Valley last week, knocking down trees, powerlines and destroying a garage in Coram.

The wind destroyed Mike Clanton’s garage near Dew Drop Inn. The wind ripped off the roof, keeping the roof trusses and beams intact, but tearing the walls off.

He’s lived in Coram for 37 years, but he’s never seen a windstorm cause damage like this on the west side of the Divide.

“This side we don’t usually get it quite this bad,” Clanton said. East Glacier area had wind gusts up to 79 mph Nov. 17.

The power went out in his home at about 8 p.m. Nov. 17 and it stayed out through the next afternoon. He was sitting in a dark living room that night when he heard a loud crash.

“I thought it was a tree that fell on the house the way it sounded,” Clanton said. The garage was storing two boats, a trailer, snowmobiles and other tools, but nothing was damaged since the roof landed next to the garage. “But I have to get another building up before winter,” he said.

He and some friends built the garage many years ago and he doesn’t remember how much it cost. He’s concerned because building costs are more expensive than they used to be.

Judy Kennedy of Coram woke up the morning of Nov. 18 to about a dozen fallen trees in her neighborhood next to Stonefly Lounge.

“I’ve never had this happen before,” Kennedy said. She has lived in Coram for 30 years and never had such strong winds.

The trees fell on her neighbor’s old camper and other outbuildings that were unoccupied. No one was injured. Her son-in-law came to help cut up the trees and clean up her backyard.

Flathead Electric Cooperative spokeswoman Wendy Ostrom-Price said that power outages in the valley started at about 5 p.m. Nov. 16. 

It was difficult restoring power quickly because repair crews had to clean up trees and debris before being able to reconnect electricity.

“The heavily-wooded areas are always going to be the hardest hit,” Ostrom-Price.

In the past Flathead Electric has had outages with more people affected such as in 2007 when people were without power for three days. But this time outages were widespread from Libby to Essex with pockets of people out of power. 

“It’s kind of a mess,” Ostrom-Price said Thursday. “But we’re making good, steady progress.”

Most people had their power restored by Nov. 19.