SEATTLE — An unseasonably strong May storm swept across Washington on Wednesday, bringing high winds, thunderstorms and even a report of a barn-shifting tornado near Moses Lake.
In central Washington about 150 miles east of Seattle, a Moses Lake area ouple reported that a tornado touched down Wednesday evening, destroying their horse barn.
Property owner Rick Call described the scene later to Grant County Emergency Management spokesman Kyle Forman, who drove out to take a look.
“Based on the description from the property owner, the damages there and discussion with the National Weather Service, it looks like a pretty credible account of what might have been a tornado that took down their barn,” Foreman said in a telephone interview.
Call had just headed out with a wheelbarrow full of hay for his four quarterhorses and the horses had just left the old wooden barn to meet him when the funnel cloud approached.
As tumbleweeds spun through the air, he watched as the cloud lifted the barn 10-20 feet into the air, rocked it back and forth and dumped it back on the ground about 30 feet away, Melissa Call said.
“It was pretty amazing, it just tore it right off its foundation,” she said in a telephone interview. “It just turned into toothpicks” when it landed. She estimated the barn was about 60 feet by 80 feet and close to 100 years old.
No livestock or people were injured and their house was unharmed.
National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Bodnar in Spokane said he spoke by phone with the property owner. He said his agency can’t confirm a tornado without sending out a damage assessment team. Radar in the Moses Lake area at the time was “kind of inconclusive” due to technical reasons, Bodnar added.
But he notes that a line of thunderstorms pushed through Eastern Washington on Wednesday evening. In the Spokane area, winds with those storms gusted near 50 mph.
The storm hit the Washington coast on Wednesday afternoon and northwest Washington soon after.
A 43 mile-per-hour gust was reported at Hoquiam with a gust of 62 mph off the central Washington coast at Destruction Island, said Weather Service meteorologist Carl Cerniglia in Seattle. Gig Harbor near Tacoma had a gust of 47 mph.
The National Weather Service says the unusually strong May storm will leave the state with cool, showery conditions for the rest of the week.
Forecasters say there’s a chance of thunderstorms today in Western Washington, where high temperatures won’t get out of the 50s.
A 3,000-foot snow level in the Cascades could bring winter driving conditions to the higher passes.
Forecasters say Eastern Washington will be cloudy through the weekend. and low temperatures will be in the 30s.
The winds knocked out power temporarily to more than 10,000 Puget Sound Energy customers in Western Washington. Utility spokesman Roger Thompson said a tree that fell on a transmission line in the Kenmore-Bothell area northeast of Seattle left more than 9,000 customers briefly without electricity. A tree on a power line in the Auburn area cut power to Green River Community College. School officials canceled classes for the rest of the day.
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