Although this is much improved from the 1,000+ Boundary County homes that were without power the night of the storm--about a quarter of all households in the county--it is still making things difficult for those 50 or so homes who are still affected in this the third day since the storm hit. Especially so with our late November temperatures predicted to be in the 30s during the daytime, dropping into the 20s at night for the next few days.
Yesterday, Northern Lights reported over 5,000 homes and businesses in their Idaho panhandle and western Montana service area were without power. Today they report they continue to work through the night, and have successfully restored service to over 2,000 of those homes and businesses, and continue to work on the remainder.
Northern Lights reports, however, that they are unable to project exactly when power will be restored to those remaining homes and businesses. "Due to the high volume of outages, Northern Lights is still unable to provide individual estimates on restoration time. If your power is out please call the NLI outage line at 1-866-No-Lites 1-866-665-4837. Thank you for your continued patience," the company said in a press release.
We have not received information on power outages in the City of Bonners Ferry service area.
Aside from the power outages, other damages locally from the storm were somewhat severe for the individuals involved. "Boundary County survived the recent wind storm in much better shape than areas to the south of us," said Dave Kramer, Boundary County Emergency Coordinator, in a press release.
Mr. Kramer continued, "Early on we had a tree across Highway 95 at milepost 494, forcing highway closure while the tree was removed.
"Boundary County had a couple structures damaged from the wind. A new structure that was in the framed-only phase at General Feed and Grain blew down, destroying the structure; two homes in Bonners Ferry had
trees blow down onto the homes, no injuries. We
had several trees blowing down throughout the
County and knocking out power in some
locations."The next couple of days in Boundary County are predicted to be sunny with high temperatures in the mid-30s and lows in the mid-20s. However, by the middle of next week, forecasters are calling for Boundary County temperatures dropping to mid-20s for the highs, dropping into the teens at night.