Windstorm hits the Canyon hard, numerous trees down
Crews from Glacier National Park clear a tree from across the Going-to-the-Sun Road Wednesday morning. There were numerous trees down and power outages in the Canyon area as a windstorm blew through. (Chris Peterson photo)
Doreen Seymour traveled up from Butte to clean up their Hungry Horse rental properties, which had numerous trees down om and around their trailers. (Chris Peterson photo)
Crews from Glacier National Park clear a tree from across the Going-to-the-Sun Road Wednesday morning. There were numerous trees down and power outages in the Canyon area as a windstorm blew through. (Chris Peterson photo)
Folks are still cleaning up after a powerful windstorm swept across the Flathead Valley and Northwest Montana Wednesday.
The Canyon communities were particularly hard hit by the storm, with numerous trees down, and several homes seeing significant damage.
James and Doreen Seymour traveled up from Butte to clean up their Hungry Horse rental properties, which had numerous trees down on and around their trailers.
One trailer was hit by several trees, moving it off the foundation, breaking the water lines, they said.
Fortunately, it was not occupied and no one was hurt. The storm saw wind gusts as high as 101 mph at a weather station near Mount Aeneas in the Jewel Basin.
Several other Hungry Horse homes were damaged as well. In Martin City there were also plenty of trees down. Some folks said on social media that it amounted to thousands of dollars in damage.
Flathead Electric Co-op spokeswoman Wendy Ostrom Price said at the height of the storm, more than 16,500 people across the Flathead were without power and power was still out for some into Sunday evening. Power was restored to customers by about 5 p.m. that night.
There were a total of 155 outages. Fortunately, the weather wasn’t all that cold for January, with highs in the 30s.
Ostrom-Price said FEC crews were helped out by mutual aid from four additional Co-op crews from Cut Bank and Ravalli.
Prior to the wind, the Flathead saw heavy rain, with 1.5 inches recorded in West Glacier.
Columbia Falls city was largely spared — the power never went out for most people.
Glacier National Park had temporarily closed the Going-to-the-Sun Road down to the foot of Lake McDonald during the storm and trees were falling down left and right in some places.
The rain at lower elevations meant snow in higher terrain, which ramped the avalanche danger to high. People seemed to heed the warning, however, as there were no reports of local avalanche accidents.
After a mild start to the first half of winter, the weather is expected to take a turn by the weekend, with a colder and snowier weather pattern expected.
