High winds batter water-logged Northwest, killing Idaho man and cutting
power to half a million
[December 18, 2025]
By GENE JOHNSON
SEATTLE (AP) — High winds toppled trees and power lines across parts of
Washington state and Idaho, killing one adult and critically injuring
two children, knocking out power to thousands and compounding the damage
already wrought by more than a week of heavy rains and flooding.
Wind gusts reaching up to 85 miles per hour battered Pullman, Washington
and the Idaho cities of Moscow and Lewiston on Wednesday morning. More
than half a million power customers were without power in Idaho,
Montana, Washington and Oregon, according to the website Poweroutage.us.
Colorado's largest utility cut power to about 50,000 homes and
businesses Wednesday to prevent downed power lines from starting
wildfires.
A 55-year-old man died after a tree fell on his home in the northern
Idaho town of Fernan, the Kootenai County Sheriff's office said. The
tree hit the bed where the man was sleeping, according to a press
release, and other people inside the home escaped without serious
injury.
In southern Idaho, the Twin Falls County Sheriff's office said high
winds caused several old, internally rotten trees to fall, knocking down
power lines and critically injuring two children. Both children were
under age 10, and were waiting for the school bus when the tree landed
on them, the sheriff's office wrote in a press release. An older sibling
was also at the bus stop, but was uninjured. An air ambulance was able
to land at the scene despite the increasing wind, the sheriff's office
said, and one child was flown to a nearby hospital while the other one
was transported by ground ambulance.
Western Washington residents — many in communities already deluged by
flooding — reported blown transformers, downed trees and power lines and
damaged roofs in social media posts early Wednesday morning. Winds were
expected to gust up to 90 mph (145 kph) along Colorado’s warm and dry
Front Range, the region just east of the mountains where most of the
state’s population lives. Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy cut power to the
region to reduce the risk of wildfires, and said it would work as
quickly as possible to restore power after winds are expected to die
down in the evening.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said Tuesday the extent of damage is
profound but unclear, and more high water, mudslides and power outages
were in the forecast.
A barrage of storms from weather systems stretching across the Pacific
has dumped close to 2 feet (0.6 meters) of rain in parts of the Cascade
Mountains, swelling rivers far beyond their banks and prompting more
than 600 rescues across 10 counties.
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This image made from a video provided by the Pacific Police
Department shows homes underwater, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in
Pacific, Wash. (Pacific Police Department via AP)
As of Tuesday, there had been only one flood-related death — of a
man who drove past warning signs into a flooded area — but key
highways were buried or washed out, entire communities had been
inundated, and saturated levees had given way. It could be months
before State Route 2, which connects cities in western Washington
with the Stevens Pass ski area and the faux Bavarian tourist town of
Leavenworth across the mountains, can be reopened, Ferguson said.
“We’re in for the long haul,” Ferguson said at a news conference.
“If you get an evacuation order, for God’s sakes, follow it.”
It won’t be until after waters recede and landslide risk subsides
that crews will be able to fully assess the damage, he said. The
state and some counties are making several million dollars available
to help people pay for hotels, groceries and other necessities,
pending more extensive federal assistance that Ferguson and
Washington’s congressional delegation expect to see approved.
According to the governor’s office, first responders had conducted
at least 629 rescues and 572 assisted evacuations. As many as
100,000 people had been under evacuation orders at times, many of
them in the flood plain of the Skagit River north of Seattle.
Elevated rivers and flood risk could persist until at least late
this month, according to the National Weather Service.
Residents near a breached levee in Pacific, south of Seattle, were
told to leave their homes well before dawn Tuesday, just hours after
an evacuation alert was lifted for residents near another broken
levee.
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Associated Press writers Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, Colleen
Slevin in Denver, and Martha Bellisle in Seattle contributed to this
report.
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