Falling trees damaged three homes in Pelican during Tuesday's windstorm, VPSO says

Falling trees damaged three homes in Pelican on Tuesday and struck the corner of a fourth, according to a National Weather Service Juneau storm report. Pelican's village public safety officer estimated at least 20 trees came down between 8 am and 12:40 pm.

The 6:04 pm report was the first law enforcement account from the community. The earlier story on the storm's peak described Pelican only through an earlier report, logged for noon, that relayed a secondhand call from Pelican about trees down and potentially damaged houses.

Neither report said how badly the homes were damaged, whether anyone was hurt or whether Pelican lost power. The weather service had placed Pelican under a wind advisory and flood watch Tuesday, warning of southeast winds up to 35 mph, gusts to 50 mph and possible downed tree limbs. Pelican sits on the northwest side of Chichagof Island, about 100 miles west of Juneau and 90 miles north of Sitka, according to the Pelican.net community website.

That earlier story covered a 76 mph gust at Sitka's airport and falling trees that cut power to most of Juneau. Haines airport recorded a 60 mph gust. In Gustavus, trees fell on roads, one on a car.

Debris flows reached the Haines Highway near Klukwan about 2:30 pm. A weather service report relayed a public account of slides at mile 20 and mile 23. "The slide at mile 20 went over part of the road, but one lane stayed open," the report said. Both mileposts fall within the highway's final reconstruction segment, where paving meant waits of up to 20 minutes in September. The state's 511 road information site listed no slide or closure there Tuesday evening.

In Juneau, a weather service report logged video of a tree falling across Cohen Drive, northwest of Auke Bay. Alaska Electric Light & Power reported a new outage from Lena Cove north out the road, plus outages in Lemon Creek and Fritz Cove. Amalga Harbor lost power "due to a tree in the line on Amalga Harbor Road," the utility said, before power was restored there.

Juneau's wind advisory, calling for gusts to 45 mph, ran until 10 pm Tuesday. Skagway's high wind warning also ran until 10 pm, followed by an advisory until 10 am Wednesday.