Many Treasure Valley residents likely received a worrying alert from Idaho Power on Tuesday night. The alert warned of a storm system with high winds tracking into the area on Wednesday and asked customers to “prepare in case of wind-related outages.”
Idaho Power spokesperson Brad Bowlin told the Idaho Statesman on Wednesday that customers shouldn’t become accustomed to warnings from Idaho Power.
“This really is more of a one-off; we’re not planning on doing that on a consistent basis every time there’s a weather system that moves through,” Bowlin said. “But we felt that this one had the potential to be serious enough and affect a relatively large number of customers.”
So, should Boise residents be concerned about losing power on Wednesday from storms?
There’s about a 50/50 chance that the city will get hit by storms at some point Wednesday, National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Wojcik told the Idaho Statesman.
“Even though we do have that risk today, the chance of Boise actually seeing (high winds) is pretty low,” Wojcik said. “It’s one of those situations where we want everyone in the area to be aware that there is a risk of severe winds with any one of these storms, but it doesn’t necessarily mean Boise is going to get hit with one of those storms.”
The Weather Service forecasts a 20% chance of storms after 1 p.m. in Boise, raising to 50% in the evening. Severe weather conditions are expected throughout eastern Oregon and Southwest Idaho.
So, while there’s a chance that storms could move into the Boise area, there’s just as good a chance we’ll see nothing substantial — the Weather Service forecasts calm winds between 5 and 7 mph if there are no storms.
But what if storms do hit the Treasure Valley? That’s when the risk of wind arrives, and meteorologists are more concerned about the wind than the rain. Wind gusts could reach as high as 70 mph, which is approaching hurricane force .
“What we’re seeing in the forecast models is for the potential for those really strong wind gusts, possibly severe, that could cause some damage,” Wojcik said. “That’s kind of the main concern today with those thunderstorms.”
If strong winds do occur, they’ll happen near an incoming storm, meaning Boise residents shouldn’t expect a random rush of wind if no storms are nearby.
According to Wojcik, one of the major threats on Wednesday is a microburst. A microburst is a column of air associated with a storm that drops rapidly, slamming into the ground and sending strong winds in all directions. A microburst caused damage in Canyon County earlier this month and was briefly mistaken as tornado damage.
“Because of the hot temperatures near the surface, typically what can happen is when we see rain-cooled air, it creates those microburst-type events and outflow winds that could be pretty severe,” Wojcik said.
The storms are also associated with a low-pressure system moving inland off the Pacific coast and bringing cooler air to the region. Thursday is forecast to be 100 degrees in Boise before we drop to 95 on Friday and 94 on Saturday.
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