Gusty winds and power outages are an annual part of fall and winter in the Pacific Northwest.
But on October 12, 1962, our region saw a powerful windstorm that has yet to be rivaled more than 60 years later. Better known as the Columbus Day Storm or “The Big Blow,” this event formed from the remnants of a Pacific typhoon to become a devastating extratropical cyclone.
From Northern California to Washington, dozens of people died, and hundreds were injured. Billions of board feet of timber were blown down, and the modern-day equivalent of billions of dollars in damage was tallied. Wind speeds exceeded hurricane-force throughout the region, with peak gusts exceeding 130 mph in multiple locations.
While Whatcom County avoided the worst of the storm’s wrath, it was in no way spared from an event that proved unforgettable to those who experienced it.
Columbus Day Weekend of Woe
Columbus Day of 1962 began with significant winds in the early morning hours of October 12, with maximum gusts of 69 mph registered just after 2 a.m. at Bellingham’s airport.
Ferndale, Bellingham, and the Northshore Road area took the initial brunt of what would be a two-part event, causing widespread but minor damage from fallen trees and branches, along with numerous power outages. The front page of that day’s Bellingham Herald forecast “diminishing blasts” from a new Friday evening storm, with sustained winds of only 30 mph. The reality would be much worse.
Ron Newell, then a 19-year-old U.S. Weather Bureau warning displayman for Bellingham Bay, was stationed at his grandparents’ home near the foot of Sehome Hill that day. His task was to raise daytime weather warning flags and nighttime warning lanterns up a 150-foot steel tower.
As told to author John Dodge in “A Deadly Wind,” a 2018 book about the storm, Newell received a morning telegram from the bureau’s Portland office, instructing him to fly the most severe gale flags he had, for winds of 55 to 63 mph. This likely made him among the first Bellingham residents to know about the severity of the approaching storm.
By 9:30 p.m., it was clear that residents were in for a wild night of weather, and many were at area high school football games.
In a 2012 retrospective published by the Bellingham Herald, Ferndale High School senior Bob Moles recalled being on the field as a running back and punter for the Golden Eagles. Midway through the game, he kicked a fourth-down punt into the wind and watched the football sail back over his head.
Local historian and author Ken Holsather was at Civic Stadium watching Bellingham High School play Seattle-Prep. He recalled swaying goalposts and a large red platform for halftime royalty being flipped over. Both games were suspended before finishing.
Widespread Columbus Day Damage
Gusts up to 75 mph were recorded at the Bellingham airport around 10 p.m., while a quarter-inch of rain also fell between then and midnight, though most of it fell sideways.
Officials shut down the state ferry system by 9:15 that evening, but it did little to help the recently retired Chief Kwina, the predecessor to the current Lummi Island ferry, Whatcom Chief.
Overcome by waves, the Kwina sank at its moorings early Saturday morning after a deck manhole had allegedly been left unsealed, allowing water to fill the engine room. Outside the safety of Squalicum Harbor, mariners reported waves more than 30 feet high in Bellingham Bay.
The storm’s ferocity peaked at 11:58 p.m., when the airport weather gauge clocked a 98 mph gust – to this day the city’s all-time wind record.
As recounted in the Bellingham Herald, Bellingham Police Department Officer Robert Knudsen described the window of a liquor store along Bay and Holly streets blowing out behind his parked patrol car. He held his foot on the brake of the parked vehicle, he added, because the wind was trying to lift the car’s rear off the ground.
Around 12:15 a.m. on October 13, unrelenting gusts ripped the third-base portion of grandstand roofing from Battersby Field, tossing it onto Girard Street in front of Knudsen and other eyewitnesses – and allegedly missing a moving vehicle.
On a bluff above Squalicum Creek, Dorothy Gonsalves and her husband awoke to no power and their home’s chimney having collapsed through their roof and into their bedroom, just missing where they’d slept.
At St. Paul’s Cathedral, a 1,200-pound terra cotta cross was ripped from its steeple, and a brick wall atop Lowell Elementary School also toppled, sending bricks crashing through the ceiling and into classrooms.
Birch Bay reported smashed cabins, while city parks in Lynden and Ferndale were nearly inaccessible due to the number of downed trees. In Fairhaven Park, a historic 177-foot-tall cedar flagpole – the tallest natural flagpole in the U.S. at the time – was blown over after having stood since 1907.
After daylight dawned, the Herald described the aftermath as a landscape of “collapsed barns, lifted roofs, dead cattle, smashed windows and trees strewn far and wide.”
Initial estimates of countywide damages exceeded $1 million ($10.6 million in 2025).
Aftermath and Legacy of the 1962 Columbus Day Storm
It took power and telephone crews up to six days to fully restore service to all those who’d lost it.
Despite the incredible damage the storm doled out, there were only two reported injuries in Whatcom County. One person suffered scrapes and bruises after being hit by a telephone pole, and an elderly woman was injured after being blown off her front porch by the wind.
The roof of Battersby Field was never replaced because repair costs were deemed too high, especially with the newly built Civic Field (now Joe Martin Field) slated to host baseball games the following spring.
All told, Whatcom County got off easy: 46 people died in the storm, including 11 in Washington.
In December 1999, the National Weather Service rated the 1962 storm as the state’s number one weather disaster of the 20th Century, ahead of events like the 1910 “Big Burn” wildfire, the 1910 Stevens Pass Avalanche and the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens.
The storm’s true peak gusts may never be known, since many anemometers (wind gauge instruments) that endured the strongest winds were damaged or destroyed during the event. But Oregon’s Cape Blanco clocked sustained winds of 145 mph, with a gust as high as 179 mph.
To this day, the 1962 Columbus Day storm remains the strongest-recorded widespread, non-hurricane windstorm to hit the contiguous United States.
