Winds expected to hit 75 mph

Frontiersman

WASILLA — High winds whipped through the Valley Monday but, at least as far as two officials could tell, didn’t wreak much havoc.

“Knock on wood, not yet,” Mat-Su Borough Deputy Director of Emergency Services Clint Vardeman said late Monday afternoon.

“We did have the one house fire,” Vardeman said. “It wasn’t caused by the winds, it just didn’t make it any easier to put out.”

Vardeman said he’d been watching the National Weather Service reports. That agency said that as of 2:30 p.m. the winds had peaked and were expected to diminish gradually, possibly dissipating by this morning.

“What they’re saying is there still could be gusts of up to 75 mph tonight,” Vardeman said.

At the Wasilla Police Department, Chief Angella Long said she was watching the weather reports as well.

“Generally, our winds last three days,” Long said, noting as Vardeman did, that the winds were supposed to die down overnight, “which would be pretty nice.”

Long said the winds hadn’t created anything more dramatic than sporadic and spotty power outages and numerous false alarms.

“We had quite a few alarms today, but other than that I can’t see too much related to wind in our calls,” she said.

Burglar alarms tend to go off when the winds start blowing, Long said. A lot of buildings are rigged with motion sensors. Rattling windows and doors will often trigger those motion sensors, depending on how sensitive they’re set.

Like the borough firefighters, Long said the wind makes it tough for her officers to do their jobs.

“It’s pretty miserable being outside your car, not to mention all the grit and gravel and things that are blowing with it,” she said.

It gets especially miserable standing outside at a traffic stop with the wind trying to push you around, she said.

But, “these guys are all well equipped and know how to dress for the weather,” Long said.

If winds do get up to 75 mph, they would be up there with hurricane-force winds, though not quite as strong as the 93 mph gusts recorded as winds tore through the Valley in March 2003, causing problems with power lines and damaging the roofs of public buildings.

Monday, Long said the winds were basically a part of life in the Valley, something all her officers have learned to deal with.

“It’s not an unusual thing for Wasilla,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.