A windstorm gusting upward of 40 to 50 mph in the mid-Willamette Valley covered most of western Oregon Saturday afternoon, knocking down about seven wires and knocking out power to about 2,300 in the Sweet Home area.
“We had a strengthening low-pressure system off the coast that intensified off the coast, which helped to ramp up the winds from the southwest,” said Meteorologist Laurel McCoy with the National Weather Service in Portland. With a tight pressure gradient on the coast and in the valley, high winds swept across western Oregon during the afternoon and early evening.
Eventually, it moved on shore toward the north and weakened over night, McCoy said. The coast experienced gusts of up to 80 mph, while the valley experienced gusts of 40 and 50 mph. Portland had gusts of up to 60 mph, with a report of a gust of 70 mph.
The storm was confined to the west of the Cascade foothills, she said.
Around Sweet Home, about 2,300 customers lost power at about 2:18 p.m., said Pacific Power Spokesman Tom Gauntt. Crews whittled that total down to 28, who had their power restored by 2 a.m. on Sunday.
At about 4:20 p.m. on Sunday, about 240 customers lost power, he said, and crews restored power to those customers by about 9 p.m.
Sometimes a storm weakens trees, and a small amount of wind can bring limbs down later after the storm has gone, Gauntt said.
The Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District responded to six wire down calls on Saturday, five of them between 11:55 a.m. and 2:59 p.m., including the 38000 block of Mountain Home, the 800 block of Dogwood, the 1000 block of Turbyne, Wiley Creek and Highway 20 and the 44000 block of Whiskey Butte, said Fire Chief Dave Barringer. The sixth wire down call came in at 12:34 a.m. on Sunday at Ninth and Dogwood.
Additionally, Sweet Home Police Department and Public Works blocked off a lane in the 4000 block of Long Street where a limb had broken and was resting on a power line.
Barringer said the fire department responded to a call for a small fire 1.3 miles up Whiskey Butte Road, and medics responded to four calls all day.
“One thing that helped is we were full shifted,” Barringer said. “We had a majority of our crew here.”
And the department had good volunteer turnout for the calls, he said.
“The biggest thing we had to deal with was alarms,” said Police Chief Jeff Lynn, all of them weather-related. Other than a couple of wires down, there weren’t any complications with traffic.
The traffic signals at 18th and Main lost power during the storm. It’s early in the year, and winter storms may knock out power again, so Lynn wanted to remind drivers that when the traffic lights go down, the intersection becomes a four-way stop.