Kaia and I are back at the OFH. Thereby hangs a tale. When I met a banker on the street in Sinai yesterday he remarked the high humidity. I said "it feels like a storm." Wow, was I correct. When weather reports nixed a planned meeting with Lisa, I stopped in Brookings to go grocery shopping. Heading SW from Brooking toward Sinai...less than 20 miles...I saw dark clouds in the SW. Hoping they were moving SE I sped for home. About a mile short of Sinai the storm struck (see below). Passing a plowed field the air was so full of blowing dirt that visibility was about 20 feet. The storm featured the darkest cloud I've ever seen. At The Little House Kaia and I ran to the basement in darkness...the power was out. The storm quickly passed and emerging from the basement destruction was evident in the many trees down in town. I was fortunate not to sustain any damage.
Sinai remained without power this morning as did Brookings, population 22K. Volga, population 1750, lies between Sinai and Volga. With the power out in Brookings, but not Volga, the Volga Café was jammed and the line to buy gas stretched for blocks. At noon today neither Brooking or Sinai had power.
After spending a powerless night in The Little House, without the aid of my CPAP machine, I decided to wait for the restoration of power in the OFH. Driving around the community this morning I saw myriad tress down, a barn blown over, steel bins ruined, irrigation sprinklers upside down, roofs open and two mallard ducks swimming placidly in water pooled in a field.
."SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — It was a lot like a hurricane whipping through the state.
The May 12 storm that covered roughly 300 miles in eastern South Dakota and killed two people brought winds of hurricane speed, said KELOLAND meteorologist Brian Karstens. Wind speeds of 75 mph or higher were reported and those are hurricane speed.
“Yesterday the sheer volume of reports the second highest total in the United States since 2004, for those hurricane force like winds in one single system. When you look at the plains of South Dakota it was a very historic day,” Karstens said.
Karstens said there were 169 reports of wind with about 60 of those reports of winds of 75 mph or higher.
The highest gust was 107 mph in Tripp.
The highest wind speed reported to the National Weather Service’s Aberdeen office so far was 102 mph at the state recreation area on Lake Cochrane, at the Minnesota border, Travis Tarver, a meteorologist with the NWS in Aberdeen said.
“The majority of our higher end was 80 mph to 90 mph,” Tarver said. “That was fairly widespread.”'
Did it remind me of the typhoon on Okinawa? Yes and no! Certainly the wind but the typhoon was much more sustained...two days...and had much more rain. This cloud was much darker.
Takk for alt,
Al
Okinawa, Japan.
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