The Storm - July 1, 2011

A tree down over the driveway.

More trees in the yard.

Clavin and dad surveying one of the holes left in the yard by uprooted trees.

I had taken the kids to the Rush City Aquatic Center and around 5:30 PM I noticed a storm was brewing.  I got the kids out of the water and headed to the car to try and beat the storm home.  We got on the road and the rain started, but we were doing fine until about Beroun.

I was headed north on Hinckley Road and I couldn't see to the front of the car.  The wind was blowing so hard that I could feel it coming in through the edge of the car door.  My windshield wipers didn't even make a difference.

I tried to stop along the road but couldn't even tell where I was as.  There were branches blowing across the road.  Every once in a while the wind would shift and I could see, the trees were bending with the wind and almost laying on the ground.  We remained calm and I inched the car to the Grand Casino parking lot. I wanted to park and wait out the storm and wanted to be where other people were in case something happened to us. 

After about 20 minutes the wind and rain let up, the skies started to lighten and people started coming out of the building.  We headed back on to the highway to try and get home.

Going east on Highway 48 wasn't too bad.  There were trees down on either side of the road, but the road was clear.  I turned south at the Tinker Wagon to take Kyle's friend home and that's where we saw the first power lines down.  We managed to get to Josh's house, they had a few trees down in the front yard and had lost power, but everyone was ok.

Kyle, Gabriella and I headed back toward home, east on Highway 48 again.  Along both sides of the road trees were down, power lines were out.  Tank's Tavern had trees down over cars and their tall metal sign was bent to the ground. 

We turned north on Flemming Logging Road and got about two miles before we had to stop to move trees off the road.  I realized that we weren't going to be able to do it without a chainsaw so I turned around and headed west on Log Cabin Road toward Herb Sikkink's house.  As I approached there was a truck and boat stopped on the road, trees were blocking Herb's driveway and Log Cabin Road.

Herb jokingly asked where I was going and when I told him I couldn't go north on the Flemming he offered us to stay at his house until we could get through. I decided to go further east and try to get across on Dorothy Grace's Road. 

We turned back around and headed further east, turning north on Tamarack Lake Road (our family always calls it Dorothy Grace's Road).  We were doing good, Kyle and I got out and moved trees out of our way in one spot but in all the other places we could get around everything.

We turned west on Barns Spring Road and thought maybe we could get home.  About two miles from the house we came across some logs in the road that there was no way we could move them or get past them.  Kyle and I were both wet and cold from being out in the weather.  Gabriella was anxiously wondering why all the trees had fallen and wanted to stand them back up again.

I had tried calling home but couldn't get through.  No one had electricity and the cell phone towers were out too.  Miraculously I reached Clavin on a cell phone and started to tell him to come with a chainsaw when behind us I saw headlights.  Loren and Larry Nelson pulled up in a truck with a chainsaw!  Hurray we were going to get through!

They cut and we all hauled branches to make a path down the road.  All total there were three spots we had to clear to get home. 

When I finally pulled in the driveway but couldn't get in because there was large tree fallen over.

All total there were about 20 trees down in the yard.  The apple orchard had been destroyed.

Later that evening we found out that a classmate of Kyle's was camping in Spooner, WI and had a tree fall on her.  She didn't survive.  Our prayers and hearts go out to the Klar family.