Published 8:30 am Friday, August 12, 2022
WALLOWA, Ore. — Bruce Eien said he remembers feeling a sense of deja vu Aug. 11, in the aftermath of the severe storm that rolled through Wallowa County.
“It looked like how people were walking around after 9/11 — in a daze,” he said. “That’s exactly what it was.”
The Enterprise resident, who has family in Wallowa, where much of the damage from large hail was centered, was touring the county to look at the damage in the aftermath of the storm.
“We were driving around, checking on all of the people we knew,” he said, “making sure they were OK.”
Earlier in the day, the National Weather Service in Pendleton issued a severe thunderstorm warning for much of Wallowa County until 5 p.m. Aug. 11. The warning included 2-inch-diameter hail and winds up to 50 mph. Camden Plunkett, a meteorologist for the weather service, said baseball-sized hail was reported in the county.
“For the hail that was received in Wallowa County, we are leaning toward tennis-ball sized hail up to 2½ inches,” he said. “We did also have some reports of ping pong ball-sized hail about 1.5 inches in La Grande as well.”
Plunkett said his office did hear about multiple injuries as a result of the hail, something Eien said he’s heard while he was in Wallowa as well.
“We are hoping everyone is all right,” he said, adding the county also received “frequent lightning strikes.”
Staff at Wallowa Memorial Hospital, Enterprise, confirmed the hospital treated several patients for injuries from the hailstones. Staff also reported how unusual this was, with one commenting she has lived in Eastern Oregon more than 40 years and this was a first for her.
Eien said around 4 p.m. the power went out in Enterprise and about the same time his wife received a text from her parents in Wallowa.
“We lost everything,” he recalled the text saying. “We immediately got in the car. We didn’t know what that meant.”
Eien said as they reached Wallowa, the damage sharpened into focus — cars with shattered windshields, downed trees and homes with severe damage.
“There was a tree that hit a house, some trees in front of the high school went over,” he said. “Telephone lines, power lines went down.”
Power remains out for 887 customers in Wallowa into the early morning hours of Aug. 12. According to the Pacific Power website, 887 customers were without power following the storm. The outage was first reported shortly before 4 p.m.
“We have crews working around the clock to restore services to all those affected,” the Pacific Power website says.
Power also was out to about 13 customer in the Minam area. The outage was also reported shortly before 4 p.m.
As of 7:45 a.m. Aug. 12, the Pacific Power outage map shows power remains out and is expected to be restored before 8:30 a.m. in both locations.
Power was out in other parts of the county, according to Pacific Power’s Twitter feed.
More than 5,300 customers in Enterprise and Wallowa were without power late in the afternoon. The cause of the outage was severe storm damage, according to the utility’s Twitter feed. Power was restored in Enterprise and Joseph before 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
Plunkett said the storm was a perfect chain of events to cause the large hailstones.
“We had really strong updrafts and then we had really strong wind shear that allowed an organized supercell thunderstorm to develop,” he said.
The storm took about 90 minutes to pass through the county, Plunkett said, and once it crossed into Idaho, the storm weakened significantly.
Plunkett said the expected 50 mph wind gusts did not materialize. There were reports of 60 mph gusts at the La Grande/Union County Airport.
“We did not have any confirmed wind gusts in Wallowa County,” he said.
Severe weather is not expected in the county over the next several days, but Wallowa County could see some isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon on Aug. 12.
Plunkett also said there is not a lot of data available on supercells in Wallowa County. The last recorded event was a tornado with a rating of EF2 that hit June 11, 1968. EF means “enhanced Fujita scale,” and a 2 on the scale means gusts of three seconds of 111-135 mph. The Western Regional Climate Center, he said, reports that tornado came with golf-ball sized hail.
