Windstorm linked to widespread damage

Last week's storm toppled trees across the city, including this one at Mountain View Cemetery.

Thunderstorms packing quarter-sized hail and wind gusts clocked at 60 miles per hour were responsible for widespread damage across Mountain Home last week.

The tightly focused storms developed near Bruneau the afternoon of Aug. 27 and hit the city around 5 p.m. before it moved to the Danskin Mountain region north of town.

A seasonal shift in winds over Arizona triggered last week's storm, according to 2nd Lt. Richard D. Anderson, commander of the weather flight at Mountain Home Air Force Base. This wind shift pushed moisture into Idaho from the southern states, causing thunderstorms to form.

"These storms moved off the mountain to the southeast of the base moving toward the town," Anderson said. "When the rain began to fall from the storms, it caused the air beneath the clouds to rush down toward the earth then out and away from the storms at a high rate of speed."

The wind picked up loose dirt and dust, creating a dust storm in advance of the rain.

Radar images showed that the most intense part of the storm passed over the city's south side with the northern areas catching just the edge of the rain and wind.

The county dispatch office received multiple reports of downed trees and power lines in addition to flooding and property damage, according to Chief Deputy Mike Barclay from the Elmore County Sheriff's Department.

A number of the broken tree limbs fell across power lines, starting a small number of fires, said Bud Corbus, a spokesman with the Mountain Home Fire Department. However, the fires were mostly limited to the limbs themselves.

Places like Carl Miller Park, which lost a number of tree limbs in the storm, "looked like a war zone" afterward, Barclay said.

The winds caused a car port to collapse in front of a home on East 9th South Street with a tree limb falling through the back window of a car on Brookside Court, Barclay said. Flooding was also reported in Tiger Alley at Mountain Home High School as well as a section of South 18th East Street.

Downed trees and limbs triggered two widespread power outages during the evening. The first was reported at 5 p.m. that affected approximately 1,700 homes, according to Stephanie McCurdy, a spokesperson with Idaho Power. Electricity was restored about 40 minutes later.

A second outage happened at 7:25 p.m. and affected nearly 2,100 customers. Crews were able to restore power by 8:35 p.m.

Smaller, sporadic power outages were also reported throughout the evening, McCurdy said.

The power outages also knocked out the traffic signal at the intersection of American Legion Boulevard and North 10th East Street for about 30 minutes, Barclay said.

City crews were out in full force last Wednesday to continue cleaning up the storm damage. Among the most significant happened at Mountain View Cemetery in which a blue spruce tree with a trunk measuring 2 1/2 feet in diameter fell during the storm, said Trish Hendrickson from the parks and recreation department.

Meanwhile, a limb from an elm tree at Ridgecrest Park fell into the garden of a neighboring home, causing extensive damage, Hendrickson said.

There were no reports of new range fires triggered by the storm, according to Mallory Eils, a spokesperson with the Bureau of Land Management.