Storms moving through Central Oregon bring strong winds, lightning, topple trees, limbs, tents; thousands lose power
CULVER, Ore. (KTVZ) – Thunderstorms moving through Central Oregon on Saturday brought strong winds, lightning and reports of toppled trees and limbs, power outages affecting nearly 5,000 and damage at Crooked River Ranch.
The Over the Edge Taphouse at CRR posted to its Facebook page a photo of the storm damage to their concert venue and said a free concert planned Saturday evening had to be canceled.
Jefferson County Sheriff Jason Pollock said a tree blew down across power lines and knocked out power in the Culver area, where Pacific Power reported nearly 1,900 customers out Saturday evening, as well as about 1,700 customers in Prineville.
Last month’s 700-acre Juniper Fire on the south side of Juniper Butte has caused a road hazard, the sheriff added. “With no vegetation, there is a lot of dust blowing across Highway 97 between milepost 107 and 108,” Pollock said.
Strong winds were reported over a wide area from the storms, including at the Wasco County Fair and Rodeo in Tygh Valley, where an attendee said vendors' items were tossed about by the winds and their tents were destroyed.
The National Weather Service in Pendleton issued a severe thunderstorm watch for nine Oregon counties, including Deschutes, until 9 p.m. Saturday.
Forecasters issued a special weather statement Saturday evening, warning that outflow from thunderstorms along the crest of the Cascades were producing winds gusts of about 45 mph as they pushed east through Central Oregon.
Firefighters were also responding to new lightning-sparked blazes in the continued effort to stop them at small sizes.
A Central Electric Cooperative outage affected NewsChannel 21's transmitter site at Grizzly Mountain, knocking out our three channels serving Crook and Jefferson County for a time. Power was restored by about 6:30 p.m.
NewsChannel 21 Chief Meteorologist John Carroll has been tracking the numerous strong storms moving through the region Saturday, with frequent updates and radar images to our Facebook page.
