North Fork continues without power today, expect end of storm tomorrow
By Erin Perkins
As of this morning, Monday, July 23, 180 customers in the North Fork area of Grand Forks continue to be without electricity while FortisBC crews work to get their main power line restored after the storm on Friday, July 20.
“We want to thank customers for their patience,” said Joyce Wagenaar, FortisBC director of communications.
The storm, which included volunteer weather observer reports of 110 kilometer an hour wind gusts, brought down trees, power lines, transformers, buildings and is responsible for the death of an 11 year-old boy at Pines Bible Camp.
Wagenaar said FortisBC continues to work in the area and hope to restore power to the main line by the end of today. Although that may not mean all the customers will have power, due to some isolated areas.
Over the weekend crews from throughout the region, the Okanagan and private contractors worked to undue the “vast amounts of damage to poles, wires and transformers” the storm caused to FortisBC, said Wagenaar. Over 7,000 customers were affected by the outage including Christina Lake and Grand Forks.
The storm continues on today but should be done by Wednesday, said Doug Lundquist, Environment Canada meterologist based out of Kelowna.
He said this severe weather is not unusual for mid-summer in the B.C. Southern Interior, but the conditions were unusual.
“(The storm was caused by) the low level moisture, combined with the storm from the weekend before (in Castlegar) that moved south to the U.S.,” said Lundquist. ” A western system dislodged the storm that went south and hit (the BC Interior) again triggering the severe storms.”
He said it appears the Grand Forks area experienced “microbursts” of wind which travelled north from Curlew, Washington up the North Fork.
“Although we are in an improving trend,” he said of the forecast. “There is still a slight potential through the week, especially in the Wednesday time frame, for more storms.”
He warns people to watch the weather reports and to take cover when a storm warning is in effect.
Today expect more rain showers as we experience the last of the weekend storm to pass through our region.
