60 mph gusts blow tree onto Moses Lake house

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MOSES LAKE — Winds gusts reaching 60 mph Monday night caused a 30 foot-tree to fall on Moses Lake resident Dan Irvin’s roof, directly above his bedroom.

“I heard a loud noise and then came outside. I didn’t know what was going on, I thought it was something tiny,” he said.

The tree did not penetrate the roof of his West Rose Avenue home and he has contacted his landlord to get the tree removed.

About a mile away from Irvin’s residence, Paula Howell’s Corkscrew Willow tree came crashing down at her Hayden Drive home.

“It’s going to cost about $700 to remove the tree. It only destroyed the sprinkler system. We want to plant another tree in its place,” said Howell, who has been living at the house for the past eight years. “We have house insurance that will cover that expense.”

She said she feels lucky that the tree did not fall on her house.

The wind gusts caused several power outages around the county.

Roughly 875 accounts in Moses Lake, Ephrata, Quincy, Warden, Soap Lake and Mattawa experienced spotty outages, said Grant County PUD Public Information Officer Rita Bjork.

“There were concentrated areas of outages in Soap Lake, with 424 accounts and 251 accounts affected in Quincy,” she said.

Monday night brought 40 to 60 mph wind gusts to the Columbia Basin region.

Moses Lake wind gusts peaked at 60 mph, Soap Lake winds peaked at 38 mph and Othello winds peaked at 46 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

The weather center considers wind gusts more than 40 mph to be strong, said Matt Fugazzi, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

From 7 p.m. to about midnight, winds around the region reached their peak and gradually subsided overnight, said Fugazzi.

The strong winds occurred due to a cold front coming through the region, he said.

“Cold air entered the west side of the Cascade Mountains, and it eventually rolled down through the high elevation hills of Ellensburg and settled in Moses Lake,” he said.

Several wind-related wind incidents were reported throughout the region.

In Ephrata, there were two separate reports of unsecured trampolines damaging a home and striking a tree.

In Royal City, a doghouse was blown over, according to Grant County Emergency Management.

The agency plans to continue to track reported damages from Monday night winds.

Fugazzi said the wind gusts were an usual occurrence for this time of year.

“The fall and spring seasons are the transitional seasons where the colder air interacts with warmer air. In areas where the two temperatures meet, friction tends to occur,” said Fugazzi.

He forecasted weather in the Columbia Basin area will continue to be breezy but there will not be another burst of strong wind gusts in the next week. The region may experience its first snowfall for the year this weekend.

There are several geographic features that are unique to the Columbia Basin area that make the region have stronger winds than other places.

Fugazzi said the low-elevation, especially in the Moses Lake area, tends to cause air pushed through the higher-elevation areas to settle and swirl.

The area is also considered an “open-terrain area,” which means wind speeds tend to be faster than other places because there are not many trees to slow down the winds, he said.

Foreman said in the past, Grant County has experienced several wind-related incidents.

The county experienced its first recorded tornado on May 18, stated Foreman.

The incident destroyed a horse barn northeast of Moses Lake and caused damages to industrial buildings. The tornado brought an estimated wind gusts of 65 to 85 mph winds.

The region records three to five weather-related incidents per year compounded by winds, stated Foreman.

He advised citizens to be prepared for emergencies.

“At a minimum, citizens should have an emergency kit to sustain them and their families for at least 72 hours ... these kits include canned food, water for drinking, flashlight and battery powered radio,” he stated.