Wind blows, power goes

A cold wind blew through the Pacific Northwest on Easter Sunday, cut power to homes in the Sisters area and brought a small plane to safe haven at Sisters airport.

Warm, sunny weather changed suddenly and without notice into a cold, blustery s

torm, with winds reaching their peak at about 2 p.m. According to a wind meter at Sisters Eagle Air, local gusts topped 50 miles per hour.

A branch from a pine tree cut a power line along Camp Polk Road just beyond the city limits, and the downed wire started a small blaze in the grass. The Sisters/Camp Sherman RFPD put nine firefighters on the flames, which took an hour to extinguish after Central Electric Co-op cut power.

About 50 Sisters-area customers were affected.

Only one other outage was reported in CEC's service area, according to member services representative Jim Crowell, and that occurred on George Cyrus Road, where another tree went through a line.

However, blowing dust nearly brought traffic on Highway 97 north of Madras to a standstill, according to news reports.

As the storm peaked in intensity, a small plane trying to get to Klamath Falls found itself confined to Central Oregon. The pilot flew toward the regional airport in Redmond, but blowing dust made a landing there inaccessible.

Flying over Sisters a couple of times, the very experienced pilot successfully landed the RV-6A, despite turbulence so severe that his copilot could not read a map to learn what frequency pilots use to communicate near Sisters.

The couple hangared their plane and stayed at a local bed and breakfast. They planned to fly out the next day to their San Francisco area home base.

The winds, which brought a sudden drop in temperatures, were followed by snow showers, and a warm, soft Easter Sunday morning was followed by a biting chill of a Monday wearing a mantle of white