Overnight storm brought more than 1,000 flashes of lightning; about 4,000 without power in Spokane region
Jun. 15—A series of fast moving thunderstorms across the Spokane area left many without power early Tuesday morning.
"Those are some of the fastest storms I've seen around here," said Mark Turner with the National Weather Service Spokane. "These things were really cooking."
A series of thunderstorms, some moving at up to 60 mph, passed through the Spokane area Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
"There were just so many small storms it was like just a stream of storms coming up from the South," Turner said.
Likely the most memorable storm happened at about 3 a.m., Turner said.
"It intensified as it went over town," he said.
Wind at the Spokane International Airport was about 39 mph but when the storm go to Felts Field gusts on the ground were up to 45 mph.
The storms were loud and didn't drop a significant amount of rain. At Fairchild Air Force Base, 0.23 inches fell; 0.37 fell at Felts Field, Turner said. The amount was on target with what was forecast by the weather service.
"These storms were real high based," Turner said. "They weren't close to the ground so there's a lot of space for evaporation."
What the storms lacked in rain, there was lots of lightning.
"Over the course of the several hours the storms were in the area, there were well over 1,000 lightning flashes," Turner said.
With such a dry fall, the worry about lightning sparking a fire is real, Turner said.
"The concern is it does get a spark or an ember there and maybe it doesn't do anything for a day or two but we get some bigger winds and it turns into a problem," he said.
By 7:30 a.m. just over 2,200 customers served by Inland Power were without power; of those, 1,886 customers were in Stevens County.
Avista utilities had 1,355 customers without power. The power outages were limited to Washington for the most part with Avista and Kootenai Electric reporting no outages in North Idaho.
Early Tuesday morning, there were reports of large hail, Turner said. Near Pomeroy one person reported hail the size of a ping pong ball.
Last night's storms were an updraft and if some raindrops get pushed high enough to freeze, they can grow, becoming large hailstones, Turner explained.
After the hail, Tuesday is forecast to be a "cloudy and showery" day, Turner said. The high temperature is forecast at 68 degrees with a low Tuesday evening of 47.
High temperatures are predicted to rise through the week with the lower 90s expected over the weekend.
