Severe wind and flooding was reported from all across the western parts of the state today. Helena seemed to be hit the hardest with wind.
Debbie Cronin is the administrative manager at St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena. She says she’s never seen wind quite like today's gust.
"This was out of the ordinary." she said. "We get wind but I’ve been at St. Peter’s for 20 years and I’ve never heard of a vehicle being blown over and injuries from that. I mean it was a mess outside."
NorthWestern Energy was reporting 2,400 outages around one pm. At about 4 pm the company said that number was down to 500 customers currently without power.
Northwestern reported smaller outages affecting Great Falls and Deer Lodge. Emergency crews were dispatched to clean up the damage and restore power. Butte saw some fallen trees and downed power lines.
A woman southeast of Butte lost control of her car on Highway 2 and rolled into a ditch. The highway patrol reports no injuries.
Flooding is the big issue in the northwest around Troy.
According to the Daily Inter Lake, six homes in the Troy area have been damaged by lowland flooding and at least three secondary roads were covered in water or washed away. Libby and Lincoln County officials declared a state of emergency.
Ryan Leech with the National Weather Service in Missoula says the worst is over.
“Most of the areas have already peaked in terms of the amount of rain and we’ve just got this front that’s coming through. So that’s what we’ve got coming in the next couple of days is some snow, but it’s going to be more of a travel nuisance than anything else.”
The Fisher River near Libby has risen from roughly 100 cubic feet per second to over 1,000 CFS in the last two days.
