Storm batters Bigfork

Bigfork and the surrounding areas received some rough weather Friday evening, with wind tearing up Flathead Lake and taking out power lines serving about 14,000 Flathead Electric Cooperative customers.  

Missoula County limited travel around Seeley Lake Friday due to down trees and lines. The National Weather Service’s storm reports included downed power lines near the hospital in Polson, a flipped turkey pen in St. Ignatius, a damaged roof on Lake Blaine Road in Creston and downed trees from Woods Bay to Bigfork. Additional damage to power lines was reported from West Glacier to Essex.  

“That thunderstorm just kind of came blazing up the lake with super strong winds and really heavy rain. It just knocked out power all over the place,” Flathead Electric Cooperative communications supervisor Courtney Stone said. “It was good in that we thought we had more damage to equipment than we actually ended up having, what actually ended up being was we just had so many trees in the line.”

Linemen worked all weekend to make repairs, with most customers’ power restored by Saturday afternoon. A few remote trees were removed from lines Sunday morning to complete the work.  

Stone noted that it’s always good to be prepared for an outage in areas as rural and forested as Northwest Montana. As a general rule for power outages, it is good to have flashlights and extra batteries, drinking water, cash and non-perishables on-hand. Plans for medical needs and pets are also good to have for an outage.  

After storms, Stone tends to get questions about putting power lines underground. 

“We do have a lot of our lines underground these days, a little more than half of our lines are underground,” she said. “Even if it was financially possible, there are areas in our service territory that are not possible to put all lines underground due to the geophysical features.” 

River, marsh, and rocky environments near many homes in the Valley make underground lines difficult to impossible in some areas.  

As of press time, there was a chance of rain and wind gusts as high as 33 mph Tuesday night and a possibility of thunderstorms before 9 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 28 held a 40% chance of rain, with storms expected to clear up throughout the week.