Thunderstorm Wind — Lemhi, Idaho

2013-09-05 · near Salmon, Lemhi, Idaho

Event narrative

The Salmon RAWS located 3 miles southwest of the city of Salmon at 5,100 feet reported a strong wind gust to 69 mph that occurred sometime between 5:36 and 6:00 pm MDT. Weather spotters reported trees down and a power outage in Salmon. A television news station reported on Facebook that over 5,000 people were affected. A person from the public in Salmon commented on this post that power was still out in parts of Salmon at 9 am MDT on September 6th.

Wider weather episode

Strong rising air associated with the nose of a 50 knot mid-level south-southwest jet combined with near record high moisture levels and an unstable atmosphere triggered wet multicellular thunderstorms over Lemhi County by late afternoon on September 5th. Flash flooding and power outages were the main impacts. To get an understanding how moist the air mass associated with this southwest surge was, the Boise weather balloon sounding recorded the 2nd highest moisture level (precipitable water values) on record on the evening of the 5th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (45.1490, -113.9450)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 474180. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.