Catching Idle Butterflies

Storms times three

Several days ago susanL wanted stories on bad storms, and it reminded me of one, three actually, storms that came through in 2001.

Dave’s brother Steve, his wife Misty and their two daughters came up for a visit. One day we drove down to see their aunt and uncle in the small town of Hazelton, about 60 miles southeast of Bismarck. Dave left a few hours before us because he was having car trouble and could only drive 20-30 mph.

As the rest of us were ready to leave in my new Jeep with a soft top, Steve asked, “So what does a tornado cloud look like?”

I described one as best as I could.

About halfway home, I noticed a massive thunderstorm looming over Bismarck. It was tall, and it was wide, and underneath was nothing but black.

“Steve,” I said. “You wanted to know what a tornado cloud looks like? Well that’s it.”

With every passing mile and we came closer to that storm, I knew the white column underneath was hail, and lots of it. At every underpass I thought, “Okay, do I stop here?”

With the soft top, I didn’t want to get caught in the hail and end up it being shredded, along with our now exposed bodies.

We reached the first exit to Bismarck, and three hailstones hit before we were underneath the overpass.

I stopped along with about a dozen other cars and watched the hail come down. The wind was minimal, luckily, but we couldn’t see 20 feet in front of us the hail was so thick. I stepped out at one point, and picked up a few stray stones. They were about the size of quarters.

No one spoke inside my Jeep. I don’t think Steve, Misty or the girls had seen a storm like this.

When it abated twenty minutes later, we drove home through Bismarck, across the Missouri River and into Mandan, where we live.

The storm hit Mandan worse than Bismarck. While we saw quarter-sized stones, Mandan had twice that, some the size of golf-balls.

Since Dave arrived just before the storm hit, he took pictures with his digital camera:

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This is outside our livingroom window just as the storm began.

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Dave took this from inside the garage. I think he wished at this point we had full-coverage on the truck.

When we reached Mandan, I was glad to have my Jeep. At railroad bridge is a low spot in the road, when we got there, it was under over one foot of water. All the cars in front of us turned around and I said, “I have a Jeep, I can do anything.”

I then turned to my passengers and said, “Do you want to give it a try?”

All nodded, though they looked nervous.

I drove through it, and but a little too fast. Water splashed up and over my hood, causing my engine to sputter. I knew from four-wheeling with Dave through Colorado creeks if your engine sputters from getting water inside the carburetor, you gun it.

So I gunned it, and we came out of the pool without a problem.

Not ten minutes after we arrived home, we had another storm head for us.

Dave took a picture of it:

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The light blue glow inside the clouds indicate more hail.

Lovely.

We all went inside and watched in silence as more hail fell. Luckily it was only pea to dime sized, so it did little damage.

Not one hour later, a third storm came through. This one only dropped rain, thank goodness, but what a rain! The weathermen later determined the third storm dropped two inches in twenty minutes. I was glad we live on a hill!

These next pictures assess the damage:

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Dave had planned to install these vents since we had just repaired portions of our leaky roof not six weeks prior. Was that bad timing! Notice also the hole in the boat’s battery case, and that’s no flimsy piece of plastic!

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At least our little Bayliner had full-coverage insurance! It was totaled!

I will say now how glad I am we bought a brick house. We only had to replace our roof, while most everyone else had to spend tens-of-thousands on new siding. Even steel siding didn’t hold up to these storms.

Our local Pizza Hut fared worse than most:

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The next morning, Misty and I went for a walk around the neighborhood to see how everyone else’s property fared.

Trees lost most of their leaves and many branches (some huge), gardens demolished, cars turned to Swiss cheese, roofs and drain spouts destroyed. Overall, it looked war-torn.

We stopped and talked to many people already outside and beginning to clean up and determine damages. They asked us how our property fared as well, some even offered help.

As we returned home, Misty said, “I can’t believe how nice people are around here.”

Her comment surprised me. She was born and raised in Texas. Dave and I have gone down there many times to visit his parents and two of his brothers, including Steve. One thing I’ve always liked about Texas was how friendly the people are.

And to have a Texan remark on the friendliness of North Dakotans, that’s high praise indeed.

The people are one of the things that attracted me to North Dakota in the beginning. It’s also the reason I will never move, no matter what North Dakota weather decides to throw at us. The people are its greatest attraction and resource (Christian bookstore managers excluded ).