A wind load label on a garage door lists the design pressures the door was tested to, in pounds per square foot, for wind pushing it in and pulling it out. A door without a rating carries no such label. In Camas and Washougal, at the Gorge’s west end, that label, the struts across the sections and the track fasteners decide how a wide door rides out a blow.
A bent strut or a bowed section is a job for panel replacement, and a door ordered for a riverfront lot goes through new garage door installation. Getting ready before a storm, from the bottom seal to the release cord, has its own guide to preparing for ice storms and east wind.
Two wind questions that get mixed up
The design wind rule and the east wind are separate questions: the first turns on how far a lot sits from the Columbia, and the second on how close a house sits to the Gorge.
Vancouver, Washougal and Camas publish the same basic wind speed for design, 97 mph as a three-second gust for Risk Category II buildings, the category that takes in houses. They part ways on exposure, the measure of how open the ground around a building is.
| Design load | Vancouver | Washougal | Camas |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic wind speed, three-second gust | 97 mph | 97 mph | 97 mph |
| Wind exposure | Exposure B at minimum; Exposure C for structures up to 1,500 feet from the Columbia | Exposure C up to 1,500 feet from the Columbia; Exposure B inland | Exposure B |
| Who rules on a specific lot | The city’s Permit Center | The city’s building department | The city’s building department |
So the two maps do not line up. Camas sits at the mouth of the Gorge yet lists Exposure B, while a riverfront lot in west Vancouver can fall inside the Exposure C band and still see far fewer east wind days. Whether a particular lot is inside the band is the city’s call, so ask rather than measure it off a map.
How hard the east wind blows near Camas and Washougal
Troutdale’s airport, straight across the river from Camas, logged east gusts of 50 mph or more on 26 days from 1998 to 2026. Neither Camas nor Washougal has a long-record official weather station, so that airport is the nearest yardstick.
In NOAA’s daily records there, the busiest years were 2014 and 2017, with 33 days each of east gusts at 40 mph or higher, followed by 2024 with 30. The strongest east gust in the record came on January 18, 2009, at 59.1 mph.
Farther west the numbers fall off. At Pearson Field, just east of downtown Vancouver, the top east gusts on record reached 48.1 mph, on November 11, 2014 and again on September 8, 2020. Up the Gorge it gets fiercer: National Weather Service reports cited gusts to 85 mph twice in January 2017 and 88 mph that December at Corbett, on the Oregon bank.
What a wind load label on a garage door tells you
A wind load label tells you the door’s tested design pressure in pounds per square foot, in both directions, and which installation drawing that rating depends on.
DASMA’s sheet on these labels quotes the 2021 International Residential Code, which has garage doors tested to ASTM E330 or ANSI/DASMA 108. The code then calls for a permanent label from the maker naming the maker, the model or series, the positive and negative design wind pressure rating, the installation drawing reference and the test standard.
Washington adopted the 2021 code with its own amendments, effective March 15, 2024, and the permit office can say how those amendments treat these sections. The label rule is new with the 2021 codes, though DASMA says wind load testing has been written into the residential code from its 2006 edition on.
Nationally, design pressures run from 10 psf to more than 70 psf, and the minimum for any one house is set job by job from its exposure, roof height, door size and more.
DASMA’s generic label lists pairs such as +20.00 / -22.00 psf, each beside its own drawing number, and notes that the values apply only when the installation follows the referenced drawing. A door that is not wind load rated gets no label at all, since makers also sell non-rated doors for places without a wind load requirement.
Some makers sell their wind load lines under trademarked names. Such a name describes the maker’s product. The rating itself lives on the door’s own label and belongs to the door as the maker built and drew it, never to the company that hangs it.
What struts do, and what they do not do
A strut is a steel stiffener fastened across a section, and DASMA’s terminology sheet defines it as a support that reduces deflection of the sections when the door is open and adds to a door’s windload capability.
On a 16-foot or 18-foot door, each section is a long span of thin steel, and struts keep it from sagging overhead when the door is up and from bowing when a gust hits it closed. The maker’s drawing sets how many struts go on and where, which is why they come from the maker’s parts list rather than from the lumber aisle.
DASMA also defines a vertical post, a reinforcement sometimes installed for high wind events, and it tells owners not to add reinforcement themselves. Extra weight, especially reinforcement the maker did not specify, can overload the track and springs, and DASMA says a reinforcement upgrade can require a package of springs, hardware and supporting track.
So a strut stiffens a section; it does not turn a non-rated door into a rated one. When we replace a bent strut or fit one the maker lists for that door, the balance gets checked afterward, because steel added across a section is weight the springs must now carry.
Wide doors and the river-facing places
The doors that take the most wind are wide ones facing the river or the Gorge, and a few Clark County strips put whole rows of them in that position.
Along the Old Evergreen Highway and in Riverview, large lots face the water toward the mouth of the Gorge. The condominiums and townhomes on Columbia Way meet the east wind and the rain it carries straight on, and the downtown waterfront, rebuilt on the former Boise Cascade mill site, puts new homes at the river’s edge.
In Camas, at the mouth of the Gorge, a door that faces east takes that wind head on, and in Washougal the lots nearest the Columbia fall under the city’s open exposure rule. DASMA counts door size directly in the effective wind area behind a design pressure, so a two-car door on any of these lots carries more total load than a single.
What we check on a garage door after an east wind event
After a hard east wind we go over the door from the struts to the track fasteners, because DASMA notes that how the track and jamb attach to the house matters as much as the strength of the door itself.
| Part | What we look for | What it can mean |
|---|---|---|
| Struts | A kinked strut, loose screws, or a strut missing from a section that had one | The section flexed past what the strut held; the strut or the section gets replaced |
| Sections | A bow across the middle, or a crease along a hinge line | A replacement section, or a new door if the model is no longer built |
| End stiles and hinges | Steel split around hinge screws, a cracked hinge knuckle | New hinges and fasteners before the split spreads |
| Track and jamb brackets | Lag screws backing out of the jamb, track twisted away from the wall | Brackets fastened back into solid framing and the track realigned |
| Rollers | A roller riding the lip of the track, or out of it | Door kept closed and opener unplugged until it is back on track |
| Top section | Cracks around the opener bracket screws | The bracket reset on sound steel, or the section replaced |
| Seals | A bottom seal pulled from its retainer, side seals torn loose | New seals before the next rain |
| Springs and cables | A frayed cable, cable wrapped unevenly on a drum, a gap in a spring | Spring or cable work before the door runs again |
| The label | On a rated door, whether it is still there and readable | A photo of it kept with the house papers |
Two things to skip while the wind is blowing. DASMA does not recommend running a garage door during high winds, and it says a car parked against the inside of the door adds no reinforcement and may damage both. Close and secure the door before the wind arrives.
Does a new door near the river need a wind load rating?
The permit office decides, because DASMA’s sheet names the Authority Having Jurisdiction as the final word on design pressure and every other wind load question.
What we can tell you is what the cities publish: a 97 mph basic wind speed, and Exposure C for lots up to 1,500 feet from the Columbia in Vancouver and Washougal. The pressure a given door needs also depends on roof height, door size and other site factors, and DASMA says the maker seldom learns that number unless it arrives with the quote or the order.
So the order of work runs like this: ask the permit center about the lot, get any required design pressure in writing, and order a door whose label meets it. The label rule speaks to doors as makers supply them, so for an existing door ask the permit office rather than assume. Our permits guide names the office to call wherever the house sits.