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The sirens wailed around Granite Sunday evening sending chills up your spine and bringing back memories of a dark day on July 25, 2000 when the roar of a tornado crashed though the west end of Granite, causing a lot of heartache and making a lot of hard work. It all seems more recent than 11 years ago. Amazingly, it has already been 19 years in since a huge rash of storms brewed up several tornadoes including one that mowed a diagonal path through Clarkfield from the southwest corner to the northeast corner of town. That was on June 16, 1992.
There is nothing quite like the nightmare that a community goes through when a tornado unleashes its fury. Both Clarkfield and Granite Falls have been through the pain of being in the direct path of a tornado strike. There is nothing like it.
Although both communities were blessed with a huge outpouring of help and aid from neighbors and state agencies, the enormity of dealing with the loss and the mess is something that takes a long time to recover from.
We worked for weeks picking up and hauling out debris of all sorts for the tornado area in Granite. It was hard work and it took a lot of gumption and generous amounts of help to get through it. My mom passed away on the day of the Clarkfield tornado so I didn’t get over there to help for a while but when I did, there was still plenty to do. People from all around southwestern Minnesota and from the rest of the state came to our towns to help out. It was amazing.
We drove through Tyler on our way to the Brookings Summer Art Fair on Sunday and got a jolt of what tornado damage looks like once again. The storm that happened on July 1 brewed up a small tornado that kicked its way though Tyler and through several farm places to the east. While the damage was a lot less severe, it was still very bad. There were lots of folks still cleaning up branches and debris. We saw the unmistakable evidence of a tornado on trees that had been stripped of their leaves and small branches and flattened grain bins both in town and on farms. There were some buildings without roofs and a lot of broken windows. A clerk at one of the convenience stores in Tyler told us that there was a lot to do in the next two weeks before the Lincoln County Fair started up. The town’s Abelskiver Days celebration is right after that and they are planning on going ahead with both events.
Our wander through the Art Fair in Brookings was slowed by the oppressive heat and the heavy humidity. Dale and Jo Pederson have a comfortable exhibit of their sturdy and attractive rustic furniture at the fair each year so we checked in with them and took a break before heading back to the northeast.
All the way we could see a long line of darkening clouds to the north. They seemed to be steadily advancing on us and not long after we got back home, they bulldozed their way into Chippewa County and Yellow Medicine County sending the sirens into a full howl. There was cloud rotation reported and the sky was green. It was hot and humid but it was chilling. The trees bent in the wind, a wall of rain slammed into town backed by the pelting of hail and more sirens. Finally when the all clear was sounded, you could almost feel a sense of relief.
The weather is so much larger than all of us and our plans. It is hard not to respect that force of nature. The sound of those sirens howling under a dark and greenish sky with clouds roiling overhead gives many of us a case of the creeps. The memories are just too bad. We were glad to have it all over.
The sirens wailed around Granite Sunday evening sending chills up your spine and bringing back memories of a dark day on July 25, 2000 when the roar of a tornado crashed though the west end of Granite, causing a lot of heartache and making a lot of hard work. It all seems more recent than 11 years ago. Amazingly, it has already been 19 years in since a huge rash of storms brewed up several tornadoes including one that mowed a diagonal path through Clarkfield from the southwest corner to the northeast corner of town. That was on June 16, 1992.
There is nothing quite like the nightmare that a community goes through when a tornado unleashes its fury. Both Clarkfield and Granite Falls have been through the pain of being in the direct path of a tornado strike. There is nothing like it.
Although both communities were blessed with a huge outpouring of help and aid from neighbors and state agencies, the enormity of dealing with the loss and the mess is something that takes a long time to recover from.
We worked for weeks picking up and hauling out debris of all sorts for the tornado area in Granite. It was hard work and it took a lot of gumption and generous amounts of help to get through it. My mom passed away on the day of the Clarkfield tornado so I didn’t get over there to help for a while but when I did, there was still plenty to do. People from all around southwestern Minnesota and from the rest of the state came to our towns to help out. It was amazing.
We drove through Tyler on our way to the Brookings Summer Art Fair on Sunday and got a jolt of what tornado damage looks like once again. The storm that happened on July 1 brewed up a small tornado that kicked its way though Tyler and through several farm places to the east. While the damage was a lot less severe, it was still very bad. There were lots of folks still cleaning up branches and debris. We saw the unmistakable evidence of a tornado on trees that had been stripped of their leaves and small branches and flattened grain bins both in town and on farms. There were some buildings without roofs and a lot of broken windows. A clerk at one of the convenience stores in Tyler told us that there was a lot to do in the next two weeks before the Lincoln County Fair started up. The town’s Abelskiver Days celebration is right after that and they are planning on going ahead with both events.
Our wander through the Art Fair in Brookings was slowed by the oppressive heat and the heavy humidity. Dale and Jo Pederson have a comfortable exhibit of their sturdy and attractive rustic furniture at the fair each year so we checked in with them and took a break before heading back to the northeast.
All the way we could see a long line of darkening clouds to the north. They seemed to be steadily advancing on us and not long after we got back home, they bulldozed their way into Chippewa County and Yellow Medicine County sending the sirens into a full howl. There was cloud rotation reported and the sky was green. It was hot and humid but it was chilling. The trees bent in the wind, a wall of rain slammed into town backed by the pelting of hail and more sirens. Finally when the all clear was sounded, you could almost feel a sense of relief.
The weather is so much larger than all of us and our plans. It is hard not to respect that force of nature. The sound of those sirens howling under a dark and greenish sky with clouds roiling overhead gives many of us a case of the creeps. The memories are just too bad. We were glad to have it all over.
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Verne Anderson dropped by the office on Monday morning with a newspaper from Hawaii. He had the front section of the Maui News in his hand and thought we’d be interested in taking a look. It’s always fun to look through other newspapers and to read about what all might be going on in a different community. Verne had a good reason to show me the Sunday July 3 edition of that newspaper, however. The lead article on the front page was a story about his 90-year-old brother Orley Anderson, a decorated World War II veteran whose birthday is on the Fourth of July. Orley, like Verne, was born in Hanley Falls. He has lived in Hawaii since 1983 and is still very active as a part-time teacher. He has had an interesting life and in the article he shared some stories about his war experiences that even Verne had never heard before.
I figured that a number of our readers would be interested in the story so I sent an email to the reporter in Maui asking for permission to run the story. Later on Monday I got an e-mail with the okay to go ahead with the reprint and it appears on page 8A in this edition.
* * * * * *
A lot of good folks showed up at Richter Field on Saturday for the Curt Kvam benefit. There was baseball played in a variety of ways and there were silent auction items galore along with some very nice door prizes. The food was good and the cause was even better.
A donor has been found and if all goes as expected in the very near future, Curt will have a new kidney.
Saturday’s event is another example of how generous folks are when it comes to helping out their neighbors and it was a fun time.
