Thar she blows!
<p>A tree was blown over and snapped loose from its roots at fell onto a power line at a home on Dalton Avenue.</p>
<p>Tim Morning watches from his front door as firefighters secure an area around his home on Fairway Drive in Coeur d'Alene after the top of two pine trees snapped and fell onto power lines.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - Tom Capone thought the booming sound was a lightning storm.
It wasn't.
It was the sheet metal roof of Capone's Pub and Grill in Post Falls ripping off in the wind.
"I thought it was thunder," Capone said, preparing for the lunch rush. "But the next thing we knew was the roof was sitting in the beer garden."
Moments later it was sitting in the road, as crews from Granite Enterprises finished tearing off the sheet mid-morning which then blew into the street - interfering with traffic.
The roof was relatively new, too, as Capone rebuilt the pub in May 2008 after an arson fire.
"We'd better have insurance," Capone said.
Wind and rain blasted North Idaho on Monday, downing trees, destroying structures, and causing power outages for thousands of residents as Avista and Kootenai Electric Cooperative reported that falling limbs and other debris knocked down power lines.
"On a day like this when winds are sustained and gusting, every time a tree touches a line or falls on a line it will cause an outage," said Avista spokesman Hugh Imhof.
By early afternoon, Avista announced that 18,000 customers were without power throughout Eastern Washington and North Idaho, and more than 20 crews were working to restore power throughout the day.
Afternoon gusts were clocked around 55 mph at the Coeur d'Alene Airport by mid-afternoon. The Kootenai County Office of Emergency Management and the North Idaho Public Information Network issued a severe weather warning until 11 p.m. Monday, warning wind speeds could hit around 60 mph.
"It sounded like lightning hit the house," said Rick O'Connor, whose front yard oak tree off Dalton Avenue ripped from its roots and knocked down a power line.
"That tree has been here since the turn of last century. The roots that broke are that big around," he said, cupping his hands to show the diameter of a bowling ball. "It must have been a pretty good gust."
The struck line caused a blast of voltage inside the home of Debbie Robinson, O'Connor's neighbor.
"Appliances, everything that was plugged in starting smoking so we unplugged everything and left the house," said Jeff Robinson, Debbie's son, describing the home as "dark and stinky" while he waited for Avista workers to restore power.
"When you hear all that popping and see all that smoking you start to see dollar signs," Jeff Robinson said. "We're going to have to replace that, that and that."
Kootenai Electric also had 6,600 outages by mid afternoon, due to a downed transmission line feeding two KEC substations.
Affected customers were primarily in Athol, Bayview, Rathdrum, Rockford Bay, Harrison and Twin Lakes, said spokeswoman Erika Neff, adding that crews were working to restore lines and residents should stay away from downed lines should they come across them.
While nobody was injured because of the wind, according Kootenai County Sheriff's Department, it did cause visibility problems from dust clouding the air.
Ralph Paul, airshed coordinator for the Department of Environmental Quality, said dust particles blowing in from drier central Washington recorded an hourly volume near Pinehurst of 556 micrograms per cubic meter.
A normal reading is closer to 20 mpcm, he said, while such high volumes can aggravate respiratory problems along with blinding motorists.
"It looked really nasty out there," he said.
Climatologist Cliff Harris said winds have clocked above 50 mph only around six times in the past five years.
Monday's blasts mixed with hail and snow and produced .51 inches of precipitation by late afternoon.
"This is a gold mine here," Harris said, adding that showers will likely continue the rest of the week. "We were primed to have a big fire season if we didn't have a wet April and May."
But the wind gave a real scare to Lynn Peterson out on Hauser Lake.
Peterson had seen a fisherman fishing from her boat house Monday morning which eventually collapsed from the wind. After she saw the crushed building she noticed a nearby tackle box, but no fishermen, which prompted her to call emergency crews.
A dive team looked briefly in the lake, but didn't locate anyone. They were called off due to poor visibility and dangerous conditions, but Peterson said it's likely the tackle box came from the boat house and the fisherman had left earlier.
"It was so cute," Peterson said of the house with a painted smiling face on the side as it floated in the water. "And it's so flattened."