Parts of East Idaho experienced some wild weather Monday evening, including thunderstorms and high winds that downed large trees in Blackfoot and north Pocatello.
The Idaho State Journal spoke to a resident of Pocatello who lives near the Bannock County Event Center as well as a resident of Porterville Road in Blackfoot who both experienced scary situations Monday evening involving trees that were toppled by the destructive winds.
Erika Cropp, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pocatello, said it was difficult to decipher whether or not the high winds were the result of the incoming storm front or collapsing thunderstorms.
“When thunderstorms collapse they’ll send out these strong outflow winds and when those travel across the Snake River Plain they can really ramp up right away,” Cropp said. “With the front moving through and the convection that we had we could see the outflows forming on radar but it was a little tough to tell what was what exactly.”
Cropp said that around 7:15 p.m. Monday, wind speeds of around 47 mph were reported in the Blackfoot area and wind speeds of about 52 mph were reported north of Pocatello near Fort Hall around the same time. While those wind speeds are typically capable of blowing off shingles from roofs and downing small trees, they’re not typically strong enough to uproot the big trees that fell in Pocatello and Blackfoot.
Chelsea Frost, who lives on Ada Street near the Bannock County Event Center in Pocatello, said the trunk of a medium-sized maple tree was snapped in half by the powerful gusts around 7 p.m. Monday in front of her home, resulting in the top half of the tree falling onto her vehicle.
“We were just chilling inside and it was actually our neighbors who were outside and came and rang the doorbell to let us know that a tree had fallen,” Frost said. “I had noticed how crazy the wind was out the window and I was like, ‘Dang, we’re gonna have some branches down today,’ and then that tree came down completely covering my Subaru.”
Frost estimates the tree that fell was about 20 to 30 feet tall. She said the large section of the tree that fell on top of her car was snapped from the base of the tree by the brute force of the winds barreling through her neighborhood.
Luckily her Subaru escaped without significant damage.
“Nothing crazy,” Frost said about the damage. “There were no broken windows and it looks like the main part of the tree missed the car and it was just all the little branches that were covering the car.”
Ray Matsuura, a resident of Porterville Road in Blackfoot, had a scarier experience when a cottonwood tree over 100 feet in height was blown over and fell on top of his home Monday evening.
“A little after 7 p.m. a wind storm, which looked to me like a microburst, came through and was blowing pretty wild, sending limbs all over the yard,” Matsuura said. “I was in my house doing some work in the laundry room when one of my neighbors told me to look out the window and one of those huge cottonwood trees was falling right toward the window I was looking out of.”
Matsuura added, “I thought I was done for.”
He said that he and his son were able to flee into the hallway by the time the tree hit the roof of their home.
Matsuura said he was surprised by how quiet the whole ordeal was.
“I thought there would be a heck of a lot more damage but apparently a big branch must have stopped it from coming crashing down entirely on the house,” he added. “It poked a few holes in the roof and bent up the siding but I never lost power.”
Matsuura said the powerful winds seemed to be coming from the northwest, an odd occurrence for the location of his home, but in talking with his neighbors he learned that they reported winds coming from other directions as well.
“One of my neighbors also had a tree fall on their house and another real big one fell across the road and blocked traffic for a bit,” he said.
Matsuura said the fallen cottonwood tree was removed from his roof and cut up into smaller sections before being taken away on Tuesday by a tree removal company based out of Idaho Falls.
He is working with his home insurance company to have the damage assessed and repaired.
“My neighbors were really great about coming over and offering to help,” he said. “We live in a pretty great neighborhood.”
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