Trees topple: Wicked storm goes unnoticed

Big trees, shattered in an instant.

It was a warm, quiet evening in tiny Colville in eastern Washington. 

But 11 miles to the east on the mountainous Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge, a violent, unpredicted storm unleashed its flurry.

Aside from the few dozen residents of the area, nobody noticed. Not then, not now — nearly a day later.

Tree roots were pulled from the earth.

At 6:30 p.m., along about a six mile stretch of sparsely populated state route 20, a hurricane force wind came out of nowhere. The National Weather Service had predicted winds of up to 50 miles per hour. But these were stronger — a lot stronger.

At least a thousand (my guess) large pine and fir trees were split in half by the powerful winds, or their roots completely yanked from the earth. Some were two to three feet thick. Luckily, no one was hurt.

Paul and Marty Schroeder were going about a normal evening in their home of 30 years. "We've never seen anything like it in all that time," Marty told me.

Marty and Paul Schroeder

I found the couple along the highway, piecing their mailbox back together. "It was like being in a Mixmaster," said Paul. "Pine needles were flying everywhere, they covered our front window."

At first, the winds were from the south. And then in an instant they switched north and got mean. They only lasted a few minutes.

I SAW THE RESULTS OF THE CARNAGE this afternoon as I crossed the mountains on my way to Newport. At first I thought the forest was being thinned, perhaps because of a bug infestation. Trees were strewn about every which way — unusual, I thought, but not impossible. Then I saw them crashed on cabins and toppled over downed power lines. The road was littered with small branches. No, as improbable as it seemed, this was Mother Nature's doing.

Trees toppled onto homes.

A few miles up the road during the storm in the Flodelle Creek Campground, only one space was occupied. The campers were gone by the time I arrived this afternoon, so I couldn't hear their story. But it must have been a terrifying experience. A National Wildlife Refuge worker who had spent the entire day clearing roads with heavy equipment told me it took two hours to reach the two campers. "Trees fell everywhere except right where they were," he said.

Everywhere, trees on the ground.

There was nothing in the news this morning about the storm. Not a peep. How could that be? Hurricanes don't happen in Washington. So how could countless uprooted trees three feet thick be explained? How could other trees of similar size be split in half without anybody noticing?

I didn't stick around to investigate. I'm not a news reporter. But I am telling you, I have never seen anything like this, and I've been on a lot of roads, in a lot of forests, and in a lot of storms in those places.

I'll never see this again.

I have learned since I wrote this that the storm that caused this damage is called a microburst. You can read about them on Wikipedia.