Wind blasts take toll

High winds hit Whitman County Monday and left downed trees and limbs and scattered holiday decorations.

A top section of a tree on S. Main Street Colfax snapped off and dropped in the front yard of the residence of Eric and Heather Meyer on the 900 block of South Main. The tree top landed across a fence in front of the house on the east side of the street with the end of the broken segment on the sidewalk.

The falling tree top snapped telephone lines and dropped them onto S. Main. Traffic cones were placed on the downed line.

Colfax firemen responded to a report at 2:05 p.m. of a downed power line on Chase Street on the Thorn Street hill. A limb from a tree knocked down a power line which was later restored by an Avista crew.

At LaCrosse, the Main Street front wall of Ken Kelso’s ammunitions storage facility was ripped off the building and deposited onto the street. The front of the building was left bare as of Monday night.

Eric Startin of Startin’s Repair across the street removed the downed wall with a fork lift and placed it onto the vacant lot just west of the building.

Karen Broeckel, the Gazette’s Dusty correspondent, reported wind blew a poplar tree onto the pickup of Lucky and Joan Myrick, denting the hood and breaking the windshield.

Four miniature display trees along the front of Tick Klock Drug were blown down along the Main Street sidewalk in Colfax. The trees all pointed northbound in their horizontal mode with the light strings still glowing before dawn.

Lori Ackerman reported she had to get out of the way of a length of vinyl siding as she was walking along Mill Street on the way to work. The siding, approximately 12 feet long, was flying north as she was walking southbound. Ackerman said she retrieved the length of siding and placed it in a hallway.

Electric spiral-type Christmas trees on display in front of city hall were blown over, and a street banner for Bodega la Differencia was found looped in the door handle when proprietors arrived Monday. Another banner had been knocked out earlier in the month.

An Avista media alert Monday morning reported power was knocked out for an estimated 11,000 customers in its service area.

Turbines at the Naff Ridge facility were shut down by the wind blast. Workers on site said the turbines recorded sustained winds of more than 80 mph at their hubs.

Highest reading at the Pullman-Moscow airport had wind gusts at 64 miles per hour. The wind recorder at McGregors at Mockonema hit 45 miles per hour when power was knocked out in that area west of town.