KALISPELL — Last month, northwest Montana was rocked by extreme weather events from record-breaking rainfall to damaging high winds knocking out power for thousands of people.
“In the 27 years I’ve been here, this is the first time I’ve seen the weather like this and a storm that impacted our 3,000 square mile territory like it did,” said Flathead Electric Cooperative vegetation management supervisor Chad Bessette.
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From December 15-24, Flathead Electric crews responded to nearly 375 separate outages in Flathead and Lincoln counties.
“You already had a lot of rain, the warm temperatures, ground is saturated, it just created a situation where those trees once those winds came, they just couldn’t stand a chance and so they came right over,” said Bessette.
Bessette said more than 36,000 meters were impacted during the 10-day wind event. For context, Flathead Electric serves 76,000 meters in their coverage area.
“At any one time it would be 75 to 80 folks out there in the field," he said. "We had folks logistically helping out, helping out with supplies, answering phone calls, it was an all hands on deck sort of event.”
Flathead Electric communications supervisor Courtney Stone said it’s rare for a wind event to be so widespread in northwest Montana, impacting every region in their service area.
“As those winds swept through Libby and into Kalispell, up to Whitefish, down the Swan, out to Essex, it was an incredible thing to see, and it was incredible to watch our crews give it everything they had for 10 days to get power back on to everyone,” said Stone.
Bessette said storm aftermath work is ongoing as crews prepare for the next wind event.
“Some poles that have been snapped off that are maybe temporarily held up we’re now going through and replacing all those poles; we’ve got some trees that need to be mitigated that potentially if we do get some heavy snow now or some more winds could come down," said Bessette.
