Thousands of residents across Alaska’s largest city were still without power Monday, a day after a powerful storm brought hurricane-force winds that downed power lines, damaged trees, forced more than a dozen planes to divert, and caused a pedestrian bridge over a highway to partially collapse.
A 132-mph (212-kph) wind gust was recorded at a mountain weather station south of Anchorage. Just north of the city, a 107-mph (172-kph) gust was recorded in Arctic Valley, and within the city a 75-mph (121-kph) gust was recorded. Hurricane-force winds start at 74 mph (119 kph).
A large low-pressure system in the Bering Sea brought the high winds, moisture and warmer than average temperatures — in the low 40s Fahrenheit (slightly over 4.4 degrees Celsius) — to Anchorage on Sunday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tracen Knopp.
In Anchorage, Steven Wood and his family were watching the winds blow things around the yard after they finished breakfast Sunday morning when they saw their neighbor’s roof partially blow off and head right toward them. “All of a sudden, I see the roof start to peel off, and all I can yell is, ‘Incoming! Everybody run!’” he told Anchorage television station KTUU.
The roof hit a window in Wood’s home, sending broken glass all over the house. “It’s down the hallways, down the stairs and it actually separated the drywall in the bedroom it hit so hard,” he said. The high winds are suspected of contributing to the partial collapse of a pedestrian walkway over the Seward Highway, a major thoroughfare and the only road leading south out of Anchorage.
