High winds cause chaos around area

High winds Tuesday resulted in plenty of eastern New Mexico chaos, including an evacuation of a restaurant, downed power poles, uprooted trees, torn roofs, small fires and out-of-order traffic lights.

Some good news: Weather forecasters say winds should be calm today, at 5 to 10 mph.

No deaths or injuries were reported from Tuesday's storm, which had gusts between 55 and 65 mph in Clovis and Portales. A wind advisory - and a red alert, for conditions that could exacerbate fire danger - were scheduled until 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Most notable was a roof that was halfway torn off behind Clovis' Sonic location at Seventh and Mitchell Streets. Clovis Emergency Management Director Dan Heerding said he believed the building was unoccupied.

Due to the threat of the roof coming down and being blown in any possible direction, the restaurant was closed and evacuated.

Also, Heerding said a section of Seventh Street between Main and Connelly and part of Mitchell Street north of Seventh were closed.

"We've got (power) lines everywhere, so many I haven't been able to keep track," Heerding said on Tuesday afternoon. "We have power lines and power poles breaking all over town. Xcel's running rampant."

Xcel Energy spokesman Wes Reeves said despite crews being busy with numerous downed lines and poles, power was only out for about 320 scattered customers throughout the New Mexico-Texas area.

"Those were mostly one customer, one outage, with something that happened in their alley," Reeves said. "There were a few multiples, but those were scattered outages. Mostly, what I'm aware of are downed service lines in people's yards. I don't have any information on major feeding lines; those seem to be holding up well."

Clovis Fire Department Battalion Chief Joel Gershon said the calls were what a department would expect on such a windy day.

"There haven't been any grassfires," Gershon said around 3:40 p.m. "We've had two fires, one a rubbish fire on Ninth Street between Main and Pile. They had a power line start a fence on fire in the 3000 block of North Thornton. It didn't amount to much; crews got there and took it out."

Gershon said, only half-joking, that if a grass fire did start it would quickly be Texas' problem too.

The Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce was a little more fortunate, and just had a section of its roof blown out of place at the chamber's building front along Grand Street.

Access wasn't blocked and cars parked along Grand weren't impacted, said Nick Mondragon of the chamber, but, "It was precariously hanging over the sidewalk in front of our building." A roofing crew was able to fix the section late in the afternoon.

Portales fared well in the high winds, other than a few business doors not wanting to stay closed and the light signal at an intersection getting turned around, officials said.

Portales Police Department Lt. Chris Williams said police had no reports of damage from residents, but the vertical light signals at the intersection of First and Main streets got turned around the wrong way.

"As long as drivers look at the one over the roadway, they should be fine," he said. He also added that Department of Transportation officials put up stop signs at Kilgore and U.S. 70 due to the light signals being out.

Roosevelt County Sheriff Malin Parker said his office had received a few calls about telephone poles being knocked down and a few power outages but that was all that was reported.