This is another memory from my childhood on the old farm.  The Storm.  I believe it is still referred to by the locals as “The Storm”.  When you speak of “The Storm” everyone knows of which you speak.  I even found reference to it on Wikipedia.  I occurred in July 1980 and caused $160M worth of damage to the area. 

From Wikipedia:

The 15 July storm developed during the devastating heat wave of 1980. Eight of the previous nine days had highs above 90°F (32°C). The high on 11 July was 100°F (38°C). On 14 July, the day before the storm, the high was 99°F (37°C); the overnight low was a sticky 79°F (26°C). Conditions for severe weather had clearly been developing for days.

While heat like that is normal for the South, it is pretty darn warm for the Upper Midwest.  Added with the high humidity where you can just about chew the air, the conditions were ripe for severe thunderstorms.

I remember that night very clearly.  I was 6 at the time.

It was nearing dusk, and we were all out in the arena either riding our horses or getting chores done for the evening.  The air had an electric feel to it, where your whole body was nervous.  You could tell that the weather was turning for the worse.

Over the years we have reminisced about the storm.  My Mom remembers that she was riding in the arena and she watched the storm systems collide in the sky.  The sky turned green and the wind started to climb.  I remember having been alone in the house and running outside in my socks to see what was going on.  The rain started to whip around.  Not quite falling…more like pelting your body.  I wanted my family in the house with me, as I could tell bad things were going to happen.

They were taking the horses out of the barn and getting them out to the pasture, so they could run if they needed to.  Then we all hunkered down in the house to wait out the storm.

Eventually our next door neighbors showed up to our doorstep.  Yes, the NL came over as they lived in a trailer and didn’t have a storm shelter.  During the worst of it we went down into the root cellar.  The maximum wind speeds recorded that night were 110 MPH, in addition there were tornado touchdowns.  My parents figured that a tornado went over our house that night.  It could have also been wind shears, which are very tornado like and damaging.

At around 10 or 11 pm, the storm had died down enough that we were able to go to sleep.  It was just raining a bit at that time.  We had lost power, so not much else to do.

In the morning we surveyed the damage.  We couldn’t get out our driveway.  It was about 1/8 mile long and riddled with trees.  If there was a tool most needed during that time, it was the chainsaw.  You could hear the sound of chainsaws all over the county.  We didn’t lose all the trees in our yard, as we had a whole lot of them, but we lost enough.  We also were without power for at least a week. 

My sister and I had just started going to swimming lessons in a pool a town over.  That building had been leveled.

My Grandma Josephine’s house was in the hardest hit area.  Her house survived but she lost a lot of trees in her yard.  The chainsaws got more of a workout.

**********

I am afraid of storms.  In the middle of the night I can wake up from a dead sleep if I hear the teeniest bit of thunder.  I will always go and see if there are tornado warnings on the news, no matter what time it is.

When I see a sky like this, I know I won’t get much sleep that night.