A storm with winds over 70 miles per hour rushed through Billings early Tuesday evening.
Alyce Tracy was in her living room recording the hail on her phone when a tree came crashing toward her, sending her running. “A tree came down on our house,” she shouts to her husband in the video.
“It poked a hole in the roof,” Alyce Tracy said Wednesday morning. “And so we have a branch inside our house.”
The Tracys rent a house on the Montana State University Billings campus, where their grandson works. Tracy said water is leaking through a crack in the living room ceiling where a large tree toppled by wind hit the roof.
The MSUB campus, near the Billings Rims, was part of one of the hardest-hit areas according to Meteorologist Brian Tesar at the National Weather Service’s Billings office.
“We had a few reports of some smaller hail, but most of the impact was from wind,” Tesar said on Wednesday.
He said wind reached 76 miles per hour at the Billings Logan International Airport on top of the Rims, second only to a record-breaking 85 miles per hour in 2007.
“Yellowstone County got hit probably as hard as anybody with those storms that developed just to the northwest of Billings,” said Tesar.
The storm arrived in the city just in time for the after-work rush hour.
It downed trees and power lines, knocked out power for homes across Billings and led to a major gas line break in a mobile home park, forcing temporary evacuations. Then, the storm moved southeast into Big Horn and Rosebud counties.
“We’re in a unique area here around Billings,” said Tesar. “We have a lot of mountains around us and things happening from the terrain and the disturbances coming off the terrain, so things can happen real quick here sometimes.”
The Tracys say their personal property is safe, and they’ll be staying with their son while the university repairs the house.
“It’s amazing what power nature has,” said Alyce Tracy. “It’s like, don’t fool with mother nature.”
According to Tesar with the National Weather Service, the lowered temperatures could continue across Montana for the next few days, with heat to return in full force next week.
