In the Silver Valley, much of the storm arrived in the early morning hours, with most power outages being reported after 6 a.m. As of Wednesday afternoon, the power remains out in every Shoshone County community and the surrounding areas. 

Each community experienced various levels of destruction, but the Pinehurst, Kingston, and Pine Creek areas appeared to have been hit the hardest. 

Pinehurst Police Chief John Richter began his day working with residents and city crews to clear roadways of fallen trees and debris, but has now transitioned to helping people find resources during the outage. 

Richter commented that there were plenty of downed trees and other destruction, but it wasn’t at the levels seen following previous storms. 

“I think we experienced far more during the storm four years ago,” Richter said. “That storm knocked down a lot of our most vulnerable trees, but it also prompted our residents to be proactive with their trees and a lot of the ones that might’ve been blown over this time around were removed.”

The January 2021 windstorm caused widespread devastation, including knocking over the historic Tall Pine tree. 

According to Shoshone County Public Works Director Jessica Stutzke, several power poles and power lines are snapped and tangled in the North Fork region. Several roads are entirely closed due to dangers from power lines on the ground over the roadway. 

“We’re throwing all our resources at this,” Stutzke said. “We’re trying to open as many roadways as we can, but there are still hazards out there.”

At this time, Stutzke doesn’t have a clear timeline for when power will be restored. 

National Weather Service meteorologist Daniel Butler said that the highest gusts from the storm reached 91 mph and were recorded in Nez Perce County. 

“Between and 4 and 7 a.m., there was a line of showers and a couple of areas that had lightning that moved through with pretty damaging windstorms,” Butler said. “Data recorded at the Coeur d’Alene airport indicated wind gusts reaching up to 66 mph at the height of the windstorm and Lewiston Airport gusted at 84 mph. That was pretty noteworthy for Idaho.” 

Avista Utilities spokesman David Vowels said that the number of affected residences had dropped from 80,000 to about 40,000 by late afternoon and that crews were still working to repair everything impacted by the storm. 

Contributing reporting from Carolyn Bostick.

    An uprooted tree lays behind the Administrative Annex building in Kellogg on Wednesday.
  

    A light pole toppled in Pinehurst as extreme winds ripped through the region on Wednesday.