Whew, it's safe to say that we deserve a calm weather weekend after the storms and especially the wind that our area experienced yesterday.
Wind damage was reported across the entire area from trees being uprooted and down, to shingles and tin roofs being ripped off of buildings. So, some of you may be wondering, how fast did the winds get in our area? Were they stronger than the crazy winds we had back in 2008 from the remnants of Hurricane Ike?
First, let's look at how strong the wind gusts were yesterday. Wind gusts outside of thunderstorms approached crazy wind speeds, topping out at 79mph at the Louisville Airport! Other areas saw wind gusts over 70mph as well in Hardinsburg and in Allendale.
Still, other parts of our area saw many wind gusts over 60-65+mph for a good portion of the afternoon.
Wind Gusts Yesterday vs 2008 Ike
If you lived in our area back in late 2008, you probably remember what was left of Hurricane Ike moving through our area and bringing hurricane force wind gusts to our area. So, in wind speed and wind gusts alone, how do they compare to each other? Here's a map of the recorded wind gusts from the remnants of Ike in 2008.
The highest wind gust on that map for Louisville is 75mph recorded also at the Louisville Airport. So yes, that does mean that technically speaking, yesterday's wind event at the Louisville Airport had a higher wind gust recorded than what Ike brought back in 2008. There was one stronger wind gust from Ike reported though in Washington County, IN at 81mph.
Now with that being said, Ike did have a much higher impact on power loss in the Louisville area compared to what happened yesterday. Now yes, many people did lose power and are still without power yesterday, and that is not to be belittled.
However, at it's peak LG&E was reporting close to 80,000 people without power in Louisville alone. Yes, that is a lot of people!
With Ike back in 2008, thousands of power lines were torn down and Louisville saw its worst blackout in at least 30 years. In the Louisville area alone, over 300,000 customers lost power, the worst power outage to date in LG&E history. Throughout the entire state, over 600,000 people were without power. For some, the power didn't come back on for over a week.
Both storm systems impacted our area greatly and both had their impacts and will be remembered in our area for years to come.
