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Willy Potvin uses a chainsaw to clear chunks of a large tree branch that fell down in front of his Fourth Street home during a brief storm Wednesday in Havre. Potvin, a Havre native, said he has had to deal with multiple downed limbs over the last few years, including during the October 2017 snow storm.
A newly planted tree is smashed under a large limb that fell from a neighboring tree Wednesday, at Pepin Park. National Weather Service reported sustained winds of 37 mph and gusts of 59 mph during a squall shortly after 4 p.m.
A thunderstorm brought high winds to Havre Wednesday, downing trees and power and phone lines in the area, while seemingly missing neighboring communities.
Great Falls National Weather Service Meteorologist Cody Moldan said a thunderstorm originating on the Canadian side of the Sweetgrass area, moved east along the southern Alberta border until it reached the Liberty-Hill county line, when it crossed into the United States.
It was already a windy day, he said, with strong surface winds a couple thousand feet above the ground, which was churning down to the surface throughout the day, he said. The storm, once in Hill County, threw out an outflow boundary, also known as a gust front, which is similar to a cold front, and mixed with the stronger winds, pushing high winds south into Havre. The winds had been west-northwest but quickly shifted north-northwest.
Havre felt a first push around 3 p.m., he said, bringing slight precipitation. That was followed by a second push raising the winds to 59 miles per hour, which was detected at the Havre-Hill County Airport at 4:06 p.m.
Moldan added that the storm then moved east into Blaine County.
Officials from Blaine County, Chinook, Harlem and Fort Belknap Indian Reservation said that no reports of wind damage had been made this morning.
Havre Public Works Director Dave Peterson said his department had not received any reports of major damage, only a few reports of downed branches.
"Other than a few branches down in the streets, I think it wasn't too bad," he said.
Havre Fire Department Chief Mel Paulson said the fire department responded to a call about a downed power line, a downed phone line and two reports of branches caught in power lines.
He said the department had an engine and an ambulance ready to respond and had NorthWestern Energy backing them. He added that the department had heard about the possibilities of the high winds.
"We were prepared for it to come," Paulson said. "... Every time the wind blows, we know we are going to get some power lines down, or at least some branches."
Firefighters responded to a call at 4:08 p.m. of a power line down which burnt a tree on the 7300 Block of 48th Street West. The fire was out before firefighters arrived on the scene. At 5:01 p.m. firefighters responded to a phone wire down on the 1100 Block Center Street and two calls, one at 5:12 p.m. on the 1000 Block of Boulevard Avenue and at 5:52 p.m. on the 400 Block Block of Fourth Avenue, of branches on power lines.
High winds in the Havre area caused some outages Wednesday. The winds caused some tree limbs to fall into power lines.
NorthWestern Energy sSpokesperson Jo Dee Black said no transformers were out in the Havre area. People may have seen a fuse blowing, which is a protective device that de-energizes a line when it has a problem, such as a tree limb falling into the line.
She said NorthWestern received a report at 4:33 p.m. of an outage that impacted about 165 customers.
"All of the outages were resolved and repaired within a couple of hours," she said.
Havre residents were out cleaning up in the aftermath of the storm shortly after it passed through the area.
Willy Potvin and Therese Cowdery lost a large limb from the tree in front of their home during the storm, and were out clearing their parkway at about 6 p.m.
Potvin said the same tree has lost limbs in previous storms and that he and Cowdery always try to clear debris from the sidewalk in front of their home so that pedestrians can get by unimpeded.
The full effects of the storm could be seen at Pepin Park, where dozens of large branches came crashing down.
Meredith Thomas, who said she lives next to the park, spent part of her evening clearing some of the smaller branches from the park and throwing them into piles. She said she sees how often the park is used and wants to ensure that it remains a clean and safe area for kids to run around. She also wanted to cut out some of the workload for the people responsible for cleaning up the park.
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Ryan Berry contributed to this article.
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