Terry Buzzell collected logs of a birch tree Monday morning in the front yard of his East Anchorage home. Strong winds the day before toppled the tree, and he was cutting it up to use as heat. He’d been without power for more than 20 hours.
“We're hoping that the power will come back on,” he said. “We're using the fireplace, and the house is still really warm. It's still like 67 degrees in the house, so thank goodness. It's like 45 out.”
Buzzell was one of many Anchorage residents cleaning up Monday after one of the region’s most powerful storms in recent history slammed the city. Wind gusts exceeded 65 mph in several parts of town on Sunday, and topped 100 mph in Bear Valley and at higher elevations. The winds downed trees, tore off pieces of roofs and led to widespread power outages that impacted thousands.
Buzzell has lived in the city for 26 years and said it’s the worst windstorm he’s experienced.
“It was pretty intense,” he said. “You can't sit and relax. You’re always out trying to save something or save something from flowing to the neighbors, but we got through it okay.”
Record warmth, with temperatures hitting 44 degrees at the National Weather Service site in West Anchorage, also led to water pooling on roads and sidewalks, and slippery conditions.
The above-freezing temperatures persisted Monday morning, but the worst of the windstorm was over, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Tracen Knopp.
“It's definitely winding down,” Knopp said. “It's moved through, and what we're seeing now is just showers on the backside, and winds will be dying down throughout the remainder of the day.”
‘We weren’t anticipating that big windstorm’
The storm’s strongest recorded wind gust was 132 mph, from a weather station in the Turnagain Pass area. A 117 mph gust was recorded at the Alyeska Resort, which closed operations on Sunday.
Those powerful winds were the reason Jason Flores thought his construction site would be demolished when he came to work Monday morning. He’s building a home in Anchorage’s Bear Valley neighborhood, where winds peaked Sunday morning at 111 mph.
Flores said the damage at the site was minimal.
“We thought all the walls would be down because, I mean, they were barely tacked on,” he said. “We weren’t anticipating that big windstorm when we left.”
The site doesn’t have any power.
Chugach Electric spokeswoman Julie Hasquet said Monday morning that several thousand people remained without power, including an outage just reported in the O’Malley Road area.
“We are not at the point yet where we are done with new outages,” Hasquet said. “We continue to respond to all of them, but this has been a very dynamic storm with extensive damage, and so our crews will continue to work until everyone gets restored.”
Winter storms can often take 20,000 to 30,000 members offline, Hasquet said, but Sunday’s storm stood out due to the extent of its damage. Although some power lines were downed in the storm Sunday, Hasquet said the main culprit behind outages has been a wide variety of objects caught in power lines, like trees.
She said Chugach can’t provide estimates on when a given outage will be fixed, but said some people will likely be without power for more than 24 hours as a result of the storm. She encouraged people who’ve seen long waits without power to consider staying elsewhere.
“This might be a time if you're still without power, to go look for some neighbors or friends who you might stay with until your power is restored,” she said.
Collapsed pedestrian bridge had stood for 50 years
In addition to taking down power lines, the high winds also brought down part of a pedestrian bridge over the Seward Highway.
Shannon McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said Monday that the collapsed Rabbit Creek pedestrian bridge was built in 1972. The steel structure was overhauled in 2020, and passed a 2023 inspection.
McCarthy said crews haven’t declared an exact cause for why the walkway was swept off its supporting span.
“We're going to wait until our bridge engineers can shed some more light on exactly how the wind interacted with the fencing and the roofing, because it did seem to come down kind of together,” she said.
She said state engineers will inspect all pedestrian bridges in Anchorage in the wake of Sunday’s collapse.
No injuries were reported in the collapse.
City officials said by Monday afternoon that, citywide, they had two reports of injuries linked to the storm: A firefighter was injured while helping a family stabilize a structure. Also, a parked ambulance was blown against a person and a police vehicle, and the person was taken to the hospital.
Deputy Municipal Manager Mark Spafford said Monday that no major damage was reported to city buildings during the windstorm. All municipal offices were operating normally for the day.
He sympathized with residents still dealing with the storm’s aftermath, ranging from debris in yards to slick residential streets.
“This is kind of abnormal, and, you know, not typically what we would expect here as far as weather in the middle of January,” Spafford said.
He said local leaders spent much of Sunday monitoring the state response to the Rabbit Creek bridge collapse. They also coordinated with electric utilities regarding their response and got word out about resources available to residents affected by the power outages.
Spafford said the city remains on its standard sanding plan for area streets.
Meanwhile, the Anchorage School District closed schools on Monday. In a statement, officials said some schools still did not have power Monday morning and parking lots were extremely slick.
“Our ASD crews will continue working around the clock to fix these issues,” it said.
The district expected to reopen schools Tuesday.
Warming cycles not good for local roads
McCarthy, with the state transportation department, said frequent freeze-melt cycles on local roads are the next major issue facing road crews. In addition to slick road conditions, the temperature changes are causing a wave of fresh potholes.
“Right now we're having this warm weather, rain, which is not good, especially when we had that cold snap and then we had the rain on top of it,” she said. “And the ground temperature remains below freezing, and yet we have rain, which is why we had that ice built up almost immediately.”
Resources for residents
- Chugach Electric is providing updates on power outages on its Facebook page and outage map. The Matanuska Electric Association is also posting Facebook and map updates.
- Power line issues can be reported to 907-762-7888.
Report downed trees to the municipality using its Hazard Tree App.
The city’s Spenard Recreation Center will be open at 8 p.m. Monday for people without power. Hot drinks and snacks will be available.
The Spenard center and the Fairview Recreation Center will be open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday with free admission. Both will provide a place to warm up, charge phones and a spot for kids to play indoors.
- Municipal residents’ wood and brush waste is being accepted free of charge for the rest of the month at Anchorage Regional Landfill Wood Lot and the Central Transfer Station Central Wood Lot.
