Hi-Line hammered by severe storms

Straight-line winds caused crop, home and farm building damage, flattened power poles, blew train cars off the tracks and caused extended power outages for some 8,000 thousand people along the Hi-Line late Saturday as severe thunderstorms swept across northcentral Montana.

The Fourth of July storm exploded in the early evening east of Cut Bank and pushed east, firing golf ball- and tennis-ball sized hail on the Havre area, said Brian Waranauskas, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Great Falls.

"Pretty much totally destroyed," Bim Strauser of Hill County said of the 32-by-80-foot calving barn that was blown away by high winds at about 9 p.m two miles south of the Port of Wild Horse on the Montana-Canada border.

It was like a bomb had been thrown in the barn with pieces scattered far and wide, Strauser said. He thinks a tornado moved through the area. His daughter spotted a funnel, and his neighbor, who lost a shop constructed with steel girders, saw a pair, he said.

High winds also picked up 1,000-pound straw bales and tossed them around. "I'd never seen anything like it," Strauser said.

The Heartland Hutterite Colony 40 miles north of Havre, which received more than a inch of rain, still was assessing the damage as of Sunday afternoon, and could only check corn, peas and barley a quarter of a mile from the colony as of Sunday because of muddy conditions, said John Wipf, colony secretary.

"They're pretty much all on the ground," Wipf said of the crops closer to the colony headquarters.

Crop damage also was reported at the East End Hutterite Colony 20 miles north of Havre. Mr. Waldner, a colony representative, said wind picked up a large rack holding aluminum pipe and flipped it over, and also moved an 18-foot-tall, 15-foot-long grain drier 150 feet.

"It's like somebody picked it up and drove if there and parked it," Waldner said. "Just weird."

Edges of pea and wheat fields are broken off or blown over, but the colony hadn't been able to get out and check all of its fields as of Sunday afternoon because of the muddy conditions.

Winds as high as 72 were recorded at the East End colony, Waldner said.

Matt Jones, spokesman BNSF Railway, said wind blew several empty grain cars being stored four miles south of Havre off of the Big Sandy subdivision line. There is no commercial traffic on the line.

Hail caused damage to campers, vehicle windshields and house siding in the Havre area, NWS said.

"We actually had six to eight inches piled up on the west side of our buildings," said Brian Barrows, a member of the Havre City Council who lives Highland Park section of town. "It damaged all the window screens. We thought it might break the windows at one point. And it damaged some siding and the trim."

A car mirror was broken, and a tree was twisted off a neighbor's house and crashed through a windshield.

"Sounded like a train driving over our house," said Barrows, adding the the storm caused minor flooding in town.

A team of three NWS meteorologists from Great Falls, Megan L. VanDenHeuvel, Don Britton and Dave Bernhardt, traveled to Havre, Chester and Fort Benton surveying damage and speaking to people and looking for evidence of tornado damage.

"We cannot confirm there were any tornado damage," VanDenHeuvel said Sunday at 5 p.m.

Typically tornadoes leave a very narrow path and there would be evidence of a swirling motion in the debris path.

"What we found today was more straight-line wind damage where the damage was facing in a similar direction," she said.

The train cars that were tipped over were all tipped in the same direction, she said.

That's not to say there wasn't any tornado damage, just that the NWS crew did not find any evidence of one, she said.

Crop damage was the most common form of damage, along with tree damage in Havre, VanDenHeuvel said.

Claudia Rapkoch, Northwestern Energy's Director of Communications, said about 8,000 customers lost power including Floweree and Fort Benton north of Great Falls and Chester east to Chinook on the Hi-Line. About 2,500 still were without power as of late Sunday afternoon including residents of Kremlin, Gilford, Iverness, Joplin, Box Elder and Big Sandy. Any customer still without power as of 10 p.m. wasn't expected to have power until Monday morning, she said.

Crews, which planned to work until 10 p.m., were being sent home to get some rest, she said.

About two dozen pole structures on the transmission line system were laid flat by the storm, Rapkoch said. Another half dozen distribution power poles were knocked over.

Additional crews from Great Falls, Lewistown and Glasgow were dispatched to the area to assist crews from Havre. In addition, contract crews were hired, as well as a tree crew. Tree damage was extensive in Havre, Rapkoch said.

"We just appreciate everybody's patience," she said. "We know this is a significant situation."

Patrick Gilchrist, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Glasgow, said severe thunderstorms produced a fair amount of rain and some pea-sized hail in the Fort Peck area in northeastern Montana. It forced some people in the Nelson Creek area of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge to seek sturdier shelter, he said.

The storm that hit the Hi-Line began east of Cut Bank at about 8:30 p.m and exited out of Blaine County at about 2 a.m. The severe thunderstorm system produced numerous storms across the Hi-Line, Waranauskas said.

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Karl Puckett at 406-791-1471, 1-800-438-6600. Twitter: GFTrib_KPuckett.