Hurricane-force winds cause widespread damage in Alaska's largest city

[January 14, 2025]  By MARK THIESSEN

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — 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.

There were no injuries when the side fencing and roof of the bridge fell onto the four-lane divided highway on Sunday. Traffic was rerouted and crews removed the debris.

A woman tosses debris from a construction site that was on Brayton Drive during the windstorm on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025. (Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News via AP)

“The winds were the leading cause, but our bridge engineers will be out there today and may be able give us a more comprehensive analysis of what happened,” Alaska Department of Transportation spokesperson Shannon McCarthy said.

Three passenger jets, nine cargo planes and one U.S. Air Force plane could not land Sunday in Anchorage because of the winds. McCarthy said all were diverted to Fairbanks, about a six-hour drive north of Anchorage. The state transportation department also oversees airports in Alaska.

Residents were beginning to clean up after the winds scattered trash bins and other debris throughout the city, toppled or damaged trees, and downed power lines.

At the peak of the storm, 17,500 customers were without power, said Julie Hasquet, a spokesperson for Chugach Electric Association. That number was down to about 5,700 on Monday. The restoration is an exacting process, and she said some customers may not have power back on until Tuesday.

“When our crews show up for repairs, they don’t know what they’re going to find,” Hasquet said, noting the storm blew trees and even trampolines from people’s yards into lines.

“If it’s a tree, you’ve got to get the tree out of the line, then you have to repair the line, rehang it, and they you have to re-energize,” she said. “It’s just been a very painstaking process because the damage is so extensive all across the city.”

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