Hail, Rain, High Winds Rake Area Falling Trees Block I-90 Traffic, Cut Power Lines

When Michael Jones left Spokane Sunday afternoon for Kennewick, he took off both his shirt and the top of his red Jeep.

About 25 miles southwest of town, Jones ran full-tilt into a storm that splintered trees like toothpicks, closed part of Interstate 90 and left behind large hailstones.

“If a picture speaks a thousand words, this is what it did to me,” said Jones, pulling up his shirt to show angry red welts covering his back.

The afternoon thunderstorm which swept at 30 mph through Eastern Washington and North Idaho felled trees, knocked down power lines, sparked brush fires and blocked traffic on I-90 for more than an hour.

The storm moved quickly, striking Spokane about 3:40 p.m. and reaching Alberton, Mont., by 7:30 p.m.

Several funnel clouds were reported. About 40 percent of Washington Water Power Co.’s customers were affected by outages.

Winds reached more than 60 mph. Hail metaphors flew across the region - nuggets the size of marbles, fingernails, golf balls and peas were reported.

Conditions were ripe for a strong thunderstorm. The atmosphere was unstable and moisture was in the air. Temperatures in Spokane reached 90 degrees Sunday, the hottest day of the year.

When a low-pressure system moved into the region with a cold front, the heat kicked off a rip-roaring thunderstorm.

“It’s kind of like having a barbecue, and you have everything in place - the lighting fluid and the charcoal,” said Jim DeBerry, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “All you need is a spark, and it takes off.”

More sparks are possible in the next couple of days, with a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms tonight.

But DeBerry said it’s not likely that any more storms will be as strong as the one Sunday. Several people reported funnel clouds near Tyler, Wash.; Garfield, Wash.; and Athol, Idaho.

Downed trees and power lines blocked off all entrances and exits to Bayview, Idaho, said Kootenai County sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger.

The mayor of Rathdrum, Idaho, declared a state of emergency as snapped power lines crackled on city streets and neighbors removed splintered trees that had crashed into their homes.

Rathdrum and Kootenai County declared the state of emergency at 7:40 p.m., said Sandy Von Behren of Kootenai County Disaster Services. They are requesting state aid for cleaning up the mess.

As towering trees smashed their children’s swing set and crashed through the roof of their home, the Spencer family of Rathdrum did the only thing it could think of.

The family sang.

Huddled in the basement, their five children whimpering in fear, the Spencers sang, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

The family had rushed into the basement when the first tree fell on the swing set, leaving behind little more than twisted metal.

Dennis Spencer was closing windows and doors when he saw the second tree coming.

“It happened so quick,” he said. “It just snapped and it was - boom - on the house.”

The tree pierced the roof, poking into the kitchen.

Ken Hammond watched from the deck of his Rathdrum home as a funnel cloud appeared.

“It tried to form and then it dissipated; it tried to form and then it dissipated again,” he said. “That’s when all the trees broke.”

One pine tree snapped and came to rest on his neighbor’s roof. Another tree clipped the side of his neighbor’s garage and landed across two yards and a driveway.

On Diagonal Road in Rathdrum, hundreds of trees were snapped in two at their midway point.

Three Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies responding to a call in Rathdrum spent more than an hour trapped amid the downed trees.

“Trees just started falling behind and in front of them,” said Wolfinger. “Fortunately, nobody got hit by a tree; they just kind of got pinned in there for a while.”

The deputies were able to get out after other deputies and a towing company arrived with chain saws.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Holly Park, standing amid the scattered tree branches on Diagonal Road. “I’ve never seen so much destruction.”

Police officers and firefighters throughout the region rushed from one emergency call to the next.

Wind peeled back the top of a mobile home in southern Spokane County. A tree fell into a home in the Spokane Valley, with limbs poking through the roof.

A Spokane County sheriff’s dispatcher told all deputies to check the equipment on their patrol cars after one car’s siren became waterlogged.

Even the National Weather Service was hit. The service’s radar station on Mica Peak was down for about an hour, apparently hit by lightning.

Electrical power was interrupted to about 110,000 of the 275,000 customers in WWP’s service area. Crews worked throughout the night to try to restore power.

In Spokane, several South Hill residents reported water in their homes. Piles of hail were dumped on Moran Prairie.

Then the sun came back out.

“If you walked outside now, you’d swear it was a dream,” Gay Jenkins, a Fire District 9 dispatcher, said Sunday evening. “It’s so beautiful. It hit so hard, and then it moved on.”

The storm cut through a three-mile stretch of I-90 near Fishtrap, Wash., where Jones was driving. More than 100 trees were splintered, broken in half or uprooted.

Fourteen trees fell across the westbound lanes of the freeway Four trees fell across eastbound lanes, but those were removed quickly.

At first, both westbound lanes were blocked and traffic was backed up for about a mile. At least one lane of westbound traffic was blocked for one hour and 45 minutes.

Washington State Patrol trooper Nick Gerard helped Bud Demeres of Ellensburg use his truck and chains to pull several trees off the highway. The state Department of Transportation removed the others.

When the storm hit, Jones first tried to drive through. The storm forced him to the side of the road, the hail so thick that he barely could see a car’s taillights 30 feet in front of him.

“It started hurting real bad,” Jones said of the hail. “A couple of them hit me in the head.”

To avoid further injury, Jones took shelter in a car ahead of him on the side of the road.

But his Jeep wasn’t so lucky. The hail knocked four holes in the radiator and broke a window. Because of the storm, Jones will have to skip a final examination today at Columbia Basin Community College.

“I was telling myself, I was going to ace the test if I got home without any mishaps,” he said. “I don’t know. There goes my GPA, I guess.”

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