Windstorm blows over with little damage

The windstorm that sparked fears of a repeat of January’s destruction blew through Kootenai County Sunday with far less damage.

While wind gusts did exceed 50 mph at times, according to the National Weather Service, far fewer trees fell on streets. A few large trees fell on and around Lakeside Avenue, and another tree had reportedly crossed Coeur d’Alene Avenue.

A few property owners reported some damage to houses and outbuildings.

"In the wake of Sunday's windstorm, Avista crews are working to restore power as quickly and safely as possible," Avista director of operations David Howell said Monday morning. "Strong winds, combined with wet, saturated soil resulted in trees coming into contact with our power poles and lines. We prepare for events like this, but you never fully know what will happen until the winds subside and our crews assess the damage.”

But by and large, that damage was minimal in comparison to the Jan. 13 storm that killed a Post Falls man, cut power to more than 30,000 residents and toppled hundreds of trees within the cities.

Tree service owners had only a fraction of calls Monday compared to the January calamity that knocked down trees en masse. Each of those employees individually attributed the softer landing to the lack of heavy rains like those that preceded the January storm.

But many of the trees that did fall Sunday knocked out power to Kootenai County residents.

Nearly all of the more-than 8,000 Avista customers who lost power in Coeur d’Alene, Dalton Gardens and the rural areas around Wolf Creek had their power restored by 4:30 p.m. Monday.

Likewise, despite intermittent outages most of Sunday afternoon and evening that left just under 1,000 Kootenai Electric customers without power, the co-op had resolved almost all of its outages. Only a handful of residents along the western stretch of Lake Coeur d’Alene were still without power as of Monday afternoon.