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2/7/2000
The Storm
I
woke up around 8:00 AM one July
morning and not recalling what day of the week
it was I finally concluded that it didn’t really matter.
I was somewhere in the middle of my second week at Fox Harbor Lodge (the
cabin) and I was by myself, with the exception of my newly adopted chocolate lab
Talcot. My only thought that
morning was to make a couple sandwiches, fill the cooler with beer and head out
on the lake (Lake of the Woods, MN.) to do some Walleye fishing, just me and the
dog.
(click to enlarge)
I
was sitting on the deck, enjoying my second cup of coffee when I noticed that
the wind had picked up. It was out of the west and right behind the wind there
were some nasty clouds rolling in from the same direction.
There was a storm comin’. At that moment I decided to call my buddy
David at work to share the moment because I know how much he loves storms.
I think he was glad I called because he didn’t use any really profane
words while reminding me how lucky I was to be there.
To
be honest, I was a little disappointed by the arrival of this bad weather. At least as disappointed as one can be in this place.
Spending time at FHL can never really be disappointing.
My problem was that this was my week to hit the fishing hard since I
spent most of the first week repairing stuff on my boat (The Slayer) and
repairing various things around the cabin.
I’d had enough of that and was ready to fish (to be honest I was out of
duct tape anyway). Reluctantly I decided it would be best to sit around and wait
out the weather and just enjoy the show that old Mother Nature was planning.
After
finishing my breakfast of bacon and eggs I watched the rain begin. Five minutes
later, around 11:00 AM it began hailing and continued for about an hour. This was my first experience with hail at the cabin and the
sound of it hitting the roof was for the lack of a better word “cool”.
After
the rain let up the cloud cover began to subside and it was looking good enough
to head out on the water. As
I was getting my things together I happened to here the “T” word on the
radio .. Tornado!! A weather
station out of Grand Forks began talking about a Tornado warning for the Grand
Forks area and warned of funnel cloud sightings.
This wasn’t a big deal initially because I was a good 100 miles north
west of there but what I heard next did concerned me.
Evidently the storm was heading NW towards the Northwest Angle area of
Lake of the Woods, directly at me.
So
being alone I didn’t want to get caught on the water with a big friggin’
twister coming at me so I decided to sit tight a little longer.
I continued to monitor the weather on the radio waiting for a slim chance
the storm might diminish allowing me to sneak out for a couple hours of fishing.
Then
about 2:00 PM the power went out in the cabin. I wasn’t concerned at first but
I began to think about the ramifications like ... I don’t dare open the
fridge, stove doesn’t work, the Marine radio is out, AM/FM radio doesn’t
work and because the running water is pumped out of the lake, that was history
too! SHIT !!
Luckily
for me I had packed the cooler full of beer and ice that morning so I had ready
access to a refreshing cold-one without having to open the fridge.
But the worst part was not knowing for sure if I was the only cabin
without power or was the whole island out..? Did a tornado knock out miles of
power lines..? How long am I going to be without electricity..? Or in other
words, “What the hell is going on?!”
Then
I remembered I had brought my backup hand held marine radio along just in case.
It didn’t have the range to call anyone with it but at least I could
hear what might be going on. As I begin monitoring the radio I found out all of
Flag Island was without power and half of Oak Island, as well.
Flag Island resort had a generator so they were acting as a broadcaster
of information during the outage. The
only encouraging news I heard was the electric company out of Roseau was aware
of the problem and had already dispatched crews to fix it.
Around
4:00 PM the wind started picking up. Again out of the west, big time. The dock is in a protective location, on the west side of the
bay in front of the cabin so I didn’t have to worry about my boat being
damaged, in fact it was barely moving in the water.
But now the talk on the radio was of Tornado Warnings for the Angle area!
I thought holy shit, a tornado is going to hit Fox Harbor Lodge at the
same time I happen to be in it. What
are the chance of that happening? I
began to consider the probability of that happening and I took comfort in know
that statistically speaking... “there’s no way”.
The cabin has been here for 25 years and it’s still standing.
About that moment it started to hail, again. This time... a lot heavier.
So, of course, I cracked open another beer and sat on the couch with a
75lb chocolate lab shaking like a leaf on my lap.
Aware of everything around me at that moment ... I was amazed at how much
the Aspen trees in the front of the cabin can bend.
Even though they were 10-15 feet apart at ground level, they were
swaying from side to side so much that they were actually knocking into each
other as the wind blew. I would
guess the wind was pushing 40-50 mph.
I
just sat back and road it out for about 20 minutes until the weather conditions
subsided. It was not long before things were back to a normal state.
I went down to the dock to check on The Slayer and all was fine.
There was no hail damage to the boat top, which was my only concern.
I strolled around the cabin to see if any damage had occurred and none
was evident. Except for a few
larger limbs lying around in the woods around the cabin we were no worse for
wear…. “we” being FHL, Talcot, The Slayer, and me.
Around
6:30 that night the power came back on. Even
thought at this time of year there are another four hours of daylight, I decided
to abandon the fishing for the day and throw a big juicy steak on the grill.
After eating dinner, Talcot and I took a walk over to the Flag Island
Resort to have a stiff drink and chat/sniff the folks over there.
I soon found out from the bartender that a Tornado touched down about a
mile east of Flag Island!!
All
I could do was tip my glass, pat my dog and say to him “Clean livin’ man,
clean livin’!!”
- Scott
Holzer
aka:
The Hoseman
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