Watch Montana Wind Toss 5,000 Gallon Fuel Tank Down I-15
Wednesday (1/13) was an extremely windy day across Western Montana. Here at work, we were having a Zoom meeting with an important dude from Corporate this morning, the feed kept dropping and it sounded like our satellite dishes were rolling around on the roof, I've never heard anything like it in our 17 years in this building. Western Montanans had gotten the wind advisories and warnings for a weather alert day, and it we got some wind gusts around Missoula, but nothing like the rest of the state.
This morning, power was out in the St. Regis area and the Flathead, then KC came to work and reported that wind had knocked out power in Stevensville and school was moved to Zoom for the day. And you know how Great Falls is ALWAYS windy, they had a video captured by the National Weather Service go viral, getting shared not just nationally, but all over the world.
Christian Cassell, the Lead Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Great Falls, captured a video of Wednesday's raging winds knocking down and blowing an empty 5,000 gallon fuel tank down I-15. He explained in later tweets that he thought Montanans would enjoy the short video, but then he began getting calls and even his wife was receiving texts from reporters around the world asking if they could share the video. Meteorologist Cassell said, "since I took the video while on my personal phone while working for the US taxpayers, it is my duty to allow it to be freely shared as everyone sees fit. And I'm totally fine with that." So we're sharing it!