BOISE, Idaho — Multiple strong and severe thunderstorms ripped through eastern Oregon and Idaho on Wednesday, causing damage in both states. In the wake of these storms, Canyon County officials declared a local disaster emergency.
According to Canyon County, around 6:30 p.m., it received information about the “local weather disaster” near Pearl Road and Highway 95 north of the Payette County line. The Canyon County Board of Commissioner’s Chari, under Idaho Code, deemed the storm’s impact on the county as a local disaster emergency.
“Declaring this as an emergency allows for additional resources to be utilized to serve the area that was impacted by the severe weather. This opens up an avenue to allow taxing districts who are providing support in the area to get reimbursed for possibly unanticipated costs,” officials stated in a news release.
Several storms grouped closely together caused damage in both Canyon County and Nyssa. Parma was briefly included in a severe thunderstorm warning, but Parma was just barely missed by that storm in particular while it went directly into Nyssa. In this severe thunderstorm warning, the National Weather Service said the radar indicated that wind gusts up to 60 mph and ping pong ball sized hail (1.5″) were present.
“This type of wind is like a hurricane wind, that’s what it felt like,” Freddie Rideau told KTVB.
Rideau and his daughter watched a tree fall on his Neighbor’s yard.
“The great thing that’s going down right now is that we have the community helping out with the fallen down tree,” he said.
Rideau continued and said “We couldn’t see across the street, and it was so much water and the wind, and she’s like, ‘dad’ the grass is coming up.'”
These particularly strong storms passed through Nyssa around 1:30 – 2pm. Around 3 p.m., the Nyssa Police Department said there were 12 downed power lines, a shop collapsed, flooding and traffic was being diverted in many places. Renee Goodenough, a Nyssa resident, said she has never seen anything like this storm.
“It was nice and warm and I had my windows down to my truck, and next thing you know the storm came — it started raining really bad, hailing, blew our greenhouse onto the roof,” Goodenough said. “All the power went out.”
Idaho Power also responded to the storm as it knocked out power to about 1000 residents in Nyssa.
