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The summer storm that crashed down on Missoula suddenly Wednesday evening turned the cityscape outside my third-floor window into a Mad Maxian cloud of wind-borne dust and debris. What first struck me as I glanced up from the couch was the color: a sickly orange haze, which quickly swallowed the neighboring rooftops. In seconds, gusts began savaging the side-yard maple tree, beating it against the house. I rushed outside just in time to hear the transformer in the alley pop as wind deposited a massive branch on top of it from what I can only guess was the next county over.
As the lights blinked out, the sirens came on.
Throughout the night and into the morning, thousands of residents across western Montana went without power. (As of Friday, some Missoulians are still making their morning coffee on propane campstoves.) Emergency services were inundated with hundreds of calls. Sunrise brought a clearer picture of the damage — streets littered with downed trees and powerlines, street lamps standing lightless — as well as more information on what had transpired.
Wednesday was already two weeks in to a statewide heatwave, which has seen the growth of numerous wildfires and multiple days of temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But the western Montana storm added rain and lightning into the mix, along with wind gusts that registered as high as 109 mph at the top of Mount Sentinel, according to the National Weather Service. The regional forecast ahead of the storm was severe enough that NorthWestern Energy had already discussed the possibility of planned power outages to keep its equipment from sparking fires in wildfire-prone areas around Bozeman, Butte, Helena and Great Falls. The utility’s contemplated list did not include the region hit hardest by the Wednesday night storm, which stretched from St. Regis to Hamilton.
In social media posts, Missoula County officials encouraged people to check on their neighbors, especially the elderly, and to conserve water as ongoing power outages had forced local governments to use back-up generators to move water. The county also noted that the Red Cross was posted up at the Missoula County Elections Center, offering residents still lacking power access to showers, air conditioning and a charger for phones and laptops.
Around my quiet riverside block, the drone of chainsaws buzzed through the morning as neighbors worked to clear the side streets. Piles of branches clogged the boulevards. Texts rolled in from friends checking in, sharing stories about totaled cars and evening jogs cut short by the storm’s frighteningly sudden arrival. As of Thursday, no fatalities had been reported, but the full extent of the damage and the storm’s impact on Montana’s wildfire season has yet to be tallied.
—Alex Sakariassen
3 Qs For
I spent the week of July 15 in Lewistown, working out of the Lewistown News-Argus newsroom on a forthcoming story about how community leaders are working to address housing affordability and other issues as a series of economic development wins position the small central Montana town to add residents for the first time in decades.
Among the key drivers of that growth was last year’s announcement that German industrial equipment company VACOM had chosen Lewistown as the site for its first U.S. manufacturing center, a development that the company has said could create 200 jobs in the 6,000-person city as soon as 2027. I spoke with VACOM Montana General Manager Marcel Klessen, who relocated his family to Lewistown earlier this summer, about the company’s plans and how it hopes to fit its operation into the rural Montana community. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
