Wind storm flattens Northeast Oregon

A storm blew through Northeast Oregon on January 7-8, 1990, with winds approaching 80 miles per hour that toppled thousands of trees, blew the roofs off structures and closed businesses, schools and roads.

The wind storm began the evening of Jan. 7, tumbling trees and downing power lines across the region. At the height of the storm the entire Umatilla Electric Cooperative’s customer service area, from Meacham to Boardman, was without power, some areas for two or three days as crews from local and outside agencies struggled to repair power lines, poles and transformers. Even two-way radios weren’t working for part of the day, hampering cleanup efforts.

Eighteen roads were closed in the area due to downed trees and blowing weeds including Highway 204 near Tollgate, where winds estimated at 100 mph blew down the equivalent of 10 million board feet of lumber during the storm. Crews with chain saws began clearing the “timber carnage” of an estimated 750 to 1,000 evergreens from the highway Jan. 8, one working east from Umatilla County while another forged west from Elgin.

At Spout Springs ski resort near Tollgate, trees fell all around the buildings, but none were hit. The high winds did cause some damage, however, when seven trees were blown onto the “Happy” chairlift, derailing the lift off of six towers.

Umatilla County Sheriff Jim Carey reported at least one accident in which a vehicle slammed into a downed tree, and said an irrigation pipe blew across Highway 395 and wrapped around a power pole near Skyview Cemetery between Pendleton and Pilot Rock. Tribal Police Officer Shawn Bird said a man reported an unknown explosion, “a bright flash and an arc across the sky” at 4 a.m. near the repeater station at Poverty Flats on Cabbage Hill, where wind speeds topped 80 mph.

Structural damage around the area included a neighbor’s storage shed blowing into a house and breaking windows in Stanfield; a metal shed across from city hall blowing over a cyclone fence into a residential back yard in Echo; a wooden sign at the Forest Service office in Ukiah blown into pieces; the entire roof of Brown’s Auto and Truck Stop Tire Center, measuring 24 by 72 feet, blown onto Highway 730 in Irrigon; and the Umatilla Marina’s floating club house breaking away from its mooring and slamming into another dock several hundred feet away.

An irrigon couple was sleeping at their home on Washington Avenue when a tree, more than 2 feet in diameter at the base, “cut through the bedroom wing like a cleaver,” chopping it in two. Lloyd and Mildred Franke were trapped in their bed briefly but escaped without a scratch. One Hermiston man’s shed vanished without a trace, and another found his metal shed more than a block away. And at the Pendleton airport, wind damage looked like a plane coming in from the west had crashed into the top of the hangars. “Sheet metal was spread over a quarter mile,” one observer said.

The following day, Jan. 9, Pendleton enjoyed mild winds and basked in record-high temperatures of 69 degrees downtown and 67 degrees at the airport.