Fierce wind and intermittently heavy rain battered the region Monday and Tuesday morning, leading to downed trees and some damage in Clark County and beyond.
Approximately 8,800 Clark Public Utilities customers lost power, according to spokesman Dameon Pesanti, but utility crews worked overnight and had restored power to all but 425 by 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
In Battle Ground, a family of Ukrainian refugees had to find another place to stay after a tree pierced the roof of their house Monday evening and scattered damage and debris inside, KATU-TV reported. Two of the family’s children were playing in the spot where the tree hit, just minutes before. They were able to stay at a friend’s house Monday night.
Clark County fared better than many other places, including the Seattle and Portland areas, where more than 100,000 customers lost power, Pesanti said.
Wind gusts as much as 35 to 50 mph were recorded throughout much of Clark County on Monday night, and there was between ½ an inch and 1 inch of rain here, said meteorologist Colby Neuman of the National Weather Service in Portland. The weather service issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the Vancouver-Portland area during Monday afternoon’s commute.
“We’ve had a moderate duration atmospheric river since the weekend, and we’ve had waves of rain and then breaks,” Neuman said.
There was even a short tornado warning for Clackamas County, Ore., and a portion of Marion County, Ore., Neuman said, but no confirmed tornado. There was a potentially damaging hailstorm.
Neuman said conditions will be clearing, and temperatures will be rising over the next several days.
Quick wind
Other than slow traffic, there was little impact on local roads, Washington State Department of Transportation spokeswoman Sarah Hannon-Nein said. A tractor-trailer rolled over into the median of Interstate 205, she said, but it barely affected traffic.
In Cowlitz County, state Highway 503 was closed in the Ariel area for several hours because of downed trees, she said.
A wind advisory for the Willamette Valley in Oregon to north of Kelso remained in effect until 4 a.m. Tuesday.
“That wind happened so quickly,” Pesanti said. “If you’ve got heavy winds following days of heavy rain, that’s just not good for trees.”
Monday night’s wind also brought many small, scattered outages, the result of smaller limbs and branches hitting power lines, he said.
“We knew we had the right conditions for scattered outages throughout the evening,” Pesanti said. “Crews will go in and see the damage and restore service, then the wind comes through and knocks something over a few yards or a few hundred yards away, and they’ve got to come right back.”
Because those outages can be small and random, he said, it’s helpful when the public reports them. The Clark Public Utilities phone number for reporting outages is 360-992-8000. Or visit www.clarkpublicutilities.com/outages-safety to report online.
“We really appreciate the outage reports that people give us,” Pesanti said. “They help the crews pinpoint specific locations. When there are many small (outages) we are able to tell the general area, but the more calls we get, the more precisely we can respond.”
