A severe thunderstorm Wednesday night slammed Missoula and surrounding communities. It knocked down many large trees and power lines and cut electricity to thousands.
Austin Amestoy: Joining me now to discuss the storm is Missoula National Weather Service Warning Coordination Meteorologist, Marty Whitmore. Hey, Marty.
Marty Whitmore: Yeah. How you doing, Austin?
Austin Amestoy: I'm well, thank you for joining us here. So Marty, I heard the wind shaking my apartment last night and then very shortly after the alerts from your office started pouring onto my phone. Tell us what kind of storm we saw last night.
Marty Whitmore: Yeah, this was a strong moving-- You know, it's really a line of storms, Austin, that developed clear back in Eastern Oregon, produced some wind gusts of 60 plus around Baker city in the early afternoon. So we're tracking this thing all the way through as it moved into Idaho. And then we really pulled the trigger on the severe thunderstorm warnings that it was coming across the crest of the Bitterroot. And so hopefully everybody had battened down the hatches well before that. But when we sound the alarm, that's really to make sure you're in a safe location as well, and hopefully people had a chance to do that.
Austin Amestoy: You said you guys were tracking it for, for quite some time there. Did you know or expect that it would, you know, crest the Bitterroot there and be as severe as it was?
Marty Whitmore: Well, you know we were looking at the history of the storm, and we saw 60 plus miles per hour. Turns out it got even a little stronger here in Missoula. So we registered a peak wind of 81-- a gust of 81 miles an hour there at the Missoula office. So it got even stronger than what we expected.
We knew, you know, anytime we get to around 60 miles an hour higher, we're calling them damaging winds for sure. And so that's what we were putting out over the alerts. But yeah, 80, 80 was-- that's a big wind for this area for sure.
Austin Amestoy: Marty, we're still waiting for, you know, some more widespread, broad information from emergency services and government officials about the extent of the damage and power outages and timelines for when that might all be restored. But, I did want to ask, you know, how widespread is the damage from this storm in Montana as best you guys can tell?
Marty Whitmore: Well, I don't know if we have a whole lot more information than what you've heard. And we did continue to issue some warnings on this line of storms as it moved up to the North into at least southern Lake County to the North and into Powell County, Granite County to the East. Those I've yet to verify exactly what sort of damage has occurred on that. And I've got this part of our role, and we try to verify every county warning that we put out with some form of damage or at least a verified wind report, and we're still in that process.
Austin Amestoy: Yeah. Marty, do you guys know when the last time this region experienced a storm of this magnitude was?
Marty Whitmore: Well, I don't have that off the top of my head, Austin. I know there was a prominent line of thunderstorms that moved northward in the Bitterroot and hit Missoula, the South Hills. And that was in August of 2015, I believe. That's when we had extensive power outages in the South Hills that took down power poles. Those folks were without power for days. I believe the Missoula County Fair was going that that same time. We were particularly worried about it. So, that's the last time I remember, right in this area, that sort of prominent wind damage.
Austin Amestoy: I also wanted to ask you about lightning reports. We definitely saw quite the light show last night. I saw some initial unconfirmed reports of, you know, hundreds of lightning strikes in the Bitterroot area. What do you guys know about lightning impacts from that storm at this point?
Marty Whitmore: Well, yeah, we saw the same thing. We were looking at a total of, this was from noon to midnight, a grand total of 1,077 lightning strikes, sort of in this area. Now those are down strikes. There obviously were a lot of cloud to cloud and in cloud flashes as well. There was some rain, of course, with this. But given the state of the fuels out there, no doubt that this, this will have ignited some fires that we'll have to deal with.
Austin Amestoy: Looking ahead, Marty, can we expect, at this point, to see more storms like this in the future? I mean, I guess in the imminent future based on your guys’ forecasting, or was this sort of a fluke?
Marty Whitmore: No, well, this was, you know-- I wouldn't even characterize it as a fluke necessarily. We've been on this dominant ridge of high pressure, and now we have a low pressure trough coming in. The transition between those two patterns are-- can always be chaotic. I think that trough will be fully in here today. We could have some thunderstorms, I think, to our east a little bit. And North Central Montana could get severe weather again, but we're probably in the clear for thunderstorms now moving forward. And I don't really see any really significant weather for the next several days.
Austin Amestoy: Once again, Missoula National Weather Service Warning Coordination Meteorologist, Marty Whitmore, helping us understand this storm. Marty, thank you so much.
Marty Whitmore: Yeah, appreciate the time, Austin. Thank you.
