-Power outages affect 3,000 in Osoyoos-Oliver area-

OSOYOOS TIMES-July 16, 2008-

By Chad Ingram and Paul EverestrnOsoyoos Times

For the second Thursday in a row, Osoyoos was pounded by a severe storm that brought down trees and caused a number of power disruptions.
Doug Lundquist, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said that at the height of the July 10 storm, around 2 p.m., wind gusts of 48 km/h were recorded in Osoyoos.
The storm, he added, had weakened by the time it hit Osoyoos because the Okanagan Valley widens in this area.
Where the valley is narrower further north, however, record-breaking wind speeds were recorded.
Penticton was hit with gusts of up to 109 km/h, smashing the July record for the city set on July 12, 1958 when winds reached 97 km/h.
The reason the winds were so strong, Lundquist said, was because the moisture-rich storm caused rain to fall into dry air, making the air denser.
The winds that hit Osoyoos brought down a large ponderosa pine in Haynes Point Provincial Park, with the falling tree narrowly missing the RV of a vacationing Surrey family.
Brenda Champion said she was inside the RV around 3 p.m. when she heard a loud, creaking sound.
I just heard it go (cracking sounds), Champion said.
She said the massive pine, more than 20 metres in length, fell in one swoop, its top portion splashing into the lake.
Champion's children Braden and Alyssa were with her at the time.
No one was injured.
We're just lucky, Champion said. It's a miracle (no one was hurt).
Champion said after the tree fell she radioed her husband, Alan, who was on the windy north side of the park helping clean up limbs that had fallen in the high winds.
We stayed on this side because it's the good side, the side that's not windy, said Champion, who started vacationing at the park as a child with her grandparents.
It's a sad day 'cause that's a real landmark, that (campsite) number 11, said park facility operator Cliff Fieguth, referring to the site where the tree had fallen.
In his sixth year on the job, Fieguth said he'd never seen winds like that.
It was pretty wild, he said. It was scary.
Jodie Foster-Sexsmith, a spokeswoman for Fortis BC, said that the storm knocked out power to as many as 3,000 people in the Osoyoos-Oliver area.
A power outage at the Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort and Spa in east Osoyoos trapped a man in an elevator for a short period of time at about 4 p.m.
Electricity had been restored to all customers in the Osoyoos area by the afternoon of July 11.
Foster-Sexsmith said falling trees and flying debris caused significant damage to the utility's entire service area in the Okanagan Valley and the Kootenay-Boundary area with between 30-35,000 people experiencing a power outage at some point during or following the storm.
She added that Summerland was hit the hardest, with 6,300 customers losing power as a result of the storm.
Utility crews were restoring power to the last small pockets where the electricity was still out late on the afternoon of July 11.
Osoyoos Volunteer Fire Department Chief Rick Jones said his crews received four storm-related emergency calls, mainly about downed trees.
A number of large branches had broken off trees in Gyro Park and sections of fence were knocked down at several properties along Main Street, but no injuries were reported.
Town of Osoyoos Operations Director Ron Doucette said crews public works crews were still cleaning up from the wind storm on July 14.
He estimated that the July 10 wind storm and the July 3 thunderstorm had already cost the Town $3,000 in labour so far.
Lundquist said the storm developed in the Clinton area in the Central Interior and had reached Kamloops by mid-morning.
He said it had enhanced by the time it hit Vernon when a cold front merged with a strong jet stream with thunderstorms developing along it.rnThe result was a perfect Okanagan summer storm.rnLundquist added that although it's not unusual for a storm to follow a southerly direction through the valley, it happens more often in the autumn.
In addition to the strong winds, Lundquist said the storm also caused the temperature to drop quickly in several places.
In Osoyoos, the mercury fell from 26 C at 2 p.m. to 18 C at 4 p.m.
Snow fell in the area of the Coquihalla Connector where the temperature dropped from 11 C to O C in one hour.
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