It's been a blustery afternoon around Missoula. The trees outside my window are going crazy as I write this and I can see the windows moving slightly when the big gusts hit. I have my fingers crossed that the power stays on as coworkers have already sent messages that they're currently without. It's far from an official power outage report but from those text messages, I can confirm outages near Sentinel High School, in the Miller Creek area, and areas on the south end of Reserve Street.

My kids love it! They've been watching the leaves fly around the neighborhood and have already put together their emergency plan for sleeping arrangements if we should find ourselves in the dark. Ah, to be a kid again, where the hope of being able to use a flashlight for the night is a source of excitement. They've also never really been in a power outage so if we were to see a lengthy one they would surely change their tune after realizing there's no internet for streaming tv and watching videos on iPads.

We knew that there was a potential for some pretty strong winds this afternoon and through the overnight and Mother Nature has been delivering on the promise. Peter Christian, our ace news reporter from KGVO, just spoke to the weather bureau and reports that, "Missoula has had wind gusts as high as 67 mph with sustained winds of over 50 mph."

According to the tweet above from Jed Christoph at KECI-TV, the peak wind gusts are projected to happen between now and 11 PM tonight. And NBC MONTANA reports that there are already more than 3,000 Northwest Energy customers without power in Missoula.

Check your yard and porches for anything that can fly away. And be sure to grab your flashlights, batteries, and radios just in case you do happen to lose power!

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