I was watching the storm come in on radar and thought I’d go and get in front of it and do some big wall cloud and lightning shots from Landing 8 on Caldron Falls Flowage.
The storm promised to be a good one, and I was watching the Doppler radar closely for cloud rotation, shear, and other warning signs. It looked like a good storm, but not dangerous. Doppler can kiss my ….
I left in the first rain heading east from my house near C & F in Silver Cliff. I got to the S curves just past Rustic Inn and it got ugly. I came around the eastern most corner by the old riding stable and started wondering if I was driving into a rain wrapped tornado. The wind was throwing the car all around and I was doing about 5mph due to zero visibility. The rain and hail was so fast that there was a half inch of rain on my windshield immediately behind the wiper on high.
I stuck it out at a crawl until Jungle Jim’s and pulled in there. The parking lot had about 6-8″ of water, and a gushing stream pouring into the parking lot from the ATV trail.
When it let up I went east toward Red Pine BP. The ditches in front of the church were full and running over their driveway, and the yard across the street was flooded. There was a tree down just east of the church, and another a few doors east on the north side of the road.
The gas station was out of power. I headed south on Parkway to survey damage. There were a lot of small branches in the road. The guy with the white mobile home and the permanent rummage sale lost about 5 big trees. There were a few trees partially across parkway past that and a lot of branches.
I got stopped just south of H & S Lane by some trees across the road between there and the 359 degree corner on the Silver Cliff/Stephenson line. An hour later it was still blocked.
On the way back I saw that the guy with the old riding stable by Bella Riva had some big trees down, and one crushed a car.
Heading south on Landing 11 Rd later there were a lot of small branches in the road, and a couple of trees across the road south of the boat landing. Between the pipeline and the paved road on Landing 11 had varying amounts of branches in the road and a few downed trees. Caldron Falls Rd had a few small branches. I moved a few small trees off of Ranch Rd right by the swampy S-curves just west of the park.
That was pretty much it for my travels, it was dark by then.
Some really nice campers at Kosir’s showed me a very funnelish looking cloud picture that they took right before they headed for shelter. It looked pretty real to me, especially after driving though it.
The storm came through right before sunset. Between blocked roads and the setting sun I can only tell you the little bit that I experienced, that I offered above.
My impression was that it was a wicked storm, but only in spots. My little Ponderosa was untouched, my neighbor’s campers 600′ east got their awnings shredded. It was very hit and miss, but where it hit, it was pretty real.
I am planning on checking people’s places tomorrow morning with the truck, straps, and chain saw. If you want me to check in on your spot, let me know. I am glad to do it. I know how much I worried about my place when I still lived in MKE.
I would say that there is an 95% chance that any given place survived the storm intact. A few took a hard beating, most didn’t.
If you want me to check your place around Silver Cliff, let me know through FaceBook, email me at rayb@cybrzn.com, or leave a comment.