Stormy Weather

It has been a crazy couple of weeks weather-wise here in Ashland, and in northern Wisconsin in general.  Some of you may have even heard about the first storm that went through, we've heard rumblings that it made national news.

The first storm on July 11th at night was a wicked rainstorm/thunderstorm that dumped on us about six inches of rain in 24 hours.  We lost our power for just a little bit and Nick sucked up 20 gallons of water from the basement.  No damage to anything, just lots of rain.  However, just a few miles south of Ashland and east of Ashland, unbelievable damage.  They received closer to 14 inches of rain in the same amount of time.  Odanah had ten homes totally destroyed, the entire reservation covered in feet of water.  All the roads into and out of Ashland in any direction except west were closed, some due to flooding.  Others because they were completely destroyed:

Hwy 63 by Grand View

We are members of a CSA and our farm had to cancel our Tuesday delivery because of their driveway and the road to Ashland looking essentially like this.  However, Wednesday they rented a Uhaul in Ashland, drove down to the broken chunk of road, and carried the boxes into the truck.  We had our veggies a mere 24 hours later.  We are making sure we eat all those veggies since they worked so hard to get to us!

I went for a run Tuesday morning, which wasn't a super fast run because I kept stopping to take photos and marvel at the water level, the rushing water in the creeks, and how brown Lake Superior, which is normally practically crystal clear, was.  I also watched a poor little beaver try and swim against the current.

Here's a link where you can see some of the damage from the surrounding areas.  Pretty outstanding.

Then, last Wednesday night.  We were woken up to intense winds, which were reported to be upwards of 75 mph.  We scooped up the girls at 4:30 in the morning and headed down to the basement.  Our unfinished basement.  Both of them of course woke up, Greta was very intrigued by the duct work.  She kept pointing at it and making her "what's that?" grunt.  Lilly sneezed tons.  She asked, "do we have anything I can use to blow my nose with down here?" 

We stayed in the basement for about twenty minutes, then brought the girls back upstairs and attempted to get them to go to sleep.  Lilly wasn't too difficult, but Greta took a good 70 minutes to fall back asleep.  Less dedicated parents would have just been awake with their kids, but I wanted my sleep.  Nick got her asleep at six and decided to stay awake.  We all slept in until after 8:00, Greta until 8:30!

This time there wasn't much rain, thank goodness, but the winds were pretty damaging.  Our power went out around 4:30 in the morning.  We just had one small branch fall out of the tree in our yard, but around the city there is remarkable damage.

Here's the tree in the boulevard next to our house:

Here's a picture of our front yard:

That branch is it

It is kind of hard to see in this photo, but the bird house we had in the tree came apart, and the roof is sitting on top of the branch.  That's the other damage that happened.  It amazes me how the house was wrapped around the tree branch.

Across the street there was a bit more tree damage:

The power didn't come back on after the storm passed, nor was it on by the time the girls had to go to day care.  Luckily day care had power, so the girls were able to go enjoy their last day of day care for three weeks.  Since we had no power and it was supposed to be a hot one, I decided to go for my run shortly after dropping the girls off. 

Here's the lake front:

Yes, that is a chunk of earth with three trees in it

My route was blocked

Another view of the trees

This was the scene in many places around town, trees split down the middle, trees cut in half, trees on power lines.  As I ran around town I marveled at how some places had a few twigs in the yard while other places had giant trees ripping out of the ground, tearing up chunks of concrete.  In one case a giant pine tree had pulled up the concrete and fallen on the roof of the neighbor's house.  (They were cleaning up, so I didn't take a photo).  The music for my run this time was the whir of chainsaws as people got to work cleaning up the mess in their yards.

When I got home from my run, I was certain we'd have power, but still no.  I putzed around, pulled some weeds out of the garden and noticed my elderly neighbor working in her yard (she also had minimal damage).  I went to see if she still was without power and also help her clean up her yard.  No power for her either, and the only thing in her yard was a fairly big branch from her pine tree.  I dragged that to our yard and worked on cutting up our branch and hers.  

While I was chopping up the branches, the city came by and started clearing up the trees, which amazed me at how efficient they were and how quickly they came.  They certainly had a system down.  The small truck would drive up, the driver jump out, get out the chain saw, hack up the tree.  Then the man driving the bull dozer like truck would scoop up the branches and dump them into the dump truck.   I took video to show Lilly and it is only 40 seconds long.  Then, they headed down the block to the next downed tree.

Each time I went back into the house, I hoped to see the stove blinking, letting me know the power was back on.  It was a hot day (low 90s) and while I was keeping blinds down, I knew it was going to be a hot night without the AC, and was worried about the food in the fridge and the freezer.  My neighbor to the south came by and we chatted for a bit, she heard we weren't going to have power for 2-4 days . . . EEK!!  That meant we should probably find a friend with a freezer we could use.  The Hofstedt family to the rescue - they had a nearly empty chest freezer in their basement, just waiting for our frozen goods - and they never lost power.  The plan was that evening I would swing by with the frozen goods.  I did go to the grocery store, buy 10 pounds of ice for some dairy products we want to make sure stayed cold.

My cell phone was running low on juice and the computer was too, so I decided I would swing by Nick's work (which also had power) and charge things up before heading to pick up the girls.  We'd go out to dinner (no power seems like a perfect reason to go out to dinner) and then bring the food over.  Not looking forward to taking a cold shower, I lucked out in that there was enough hot water stored that I was able to take a warm shower despite the lack of power.  After my shower I headed over to Northland to juice up (and, start this blog post, which I am going to finish tonight, nearly a week later . . .).  According to the Xcel website, our power was predicted to be back on at 8:00 PM the following day.

We went out to dinner, then Lilly and I brought the frozen food over to our friends' house while Nick put Greta to bed (in her super hot room).  Lilly and I also swung by the grocery store to buy another bag of ice.  When Lilly and I walked into the house, after seeing Nick and Greta out for a walk (too hot for Greta to sleep!) we saw the blinking lights on the stove!  We had power!!!!  We cranked the AC and wondered why we didn't bring food over to our friends' sooner.  (That's why the power came back on).  Saturday I saw my cousin Abby at the Farmer's Market, and she said they had to go to the Artesian Well to get water for all their animals and went to borrow a back up generator.  When they got back from hauling TONS of water, their power was on.

Over the last few days, we've marveled at how quickly the tree brush and fallen trees have been cleaned up.  We have also been amazed at how much damage was done.  It seems every where we turn, we see more damage, like this house just down a few blocks from our house:

Yes, they have two holes in the top of their house

Nick and I normally like a nice good rainfall and a good thunderstorm in the summer, but this is enough for awhile.