The Father's Day storm of 2005.

It sounded like jet engines, roiling and growling almost on top of the ground in angry masses of yellow, orange and sickly green. That is, if you saw it coming. No one here knew this storm was on its way as it rolled across the flat prairie around 5:30 a.m.

The local radio station, when it was all over, responded to those wondering why there wasn't more warning by stating that weather officials said they hadn't had much warning, either. The system developed suddenly, they said, and they had about 10 minutes to work to get the warning out about the 90+ horizontal or downburst winds.

This storm traveled over 60 miles, never waning, moving quickly across the prairie.

The storm's winds snapped and uprooted trees, blew Quonsets and farm buildings across the ground, their entrails spilling north-east across fields, joining the bobbing and imploding grain bins tumbling as if they were paper.

In another 25 minutes, after it left this area, the storm would strike Icelandic State Park and cause a tree to fall on a camper in a tent. The camper was severely injured, but saved from death by two coolers in the tent that took the brunt of the fall.

I was asleep, like many people.

The sudden silence of my room fan shutting off, as the power died, woke me up to a strange light—a putrid green. It was the color of a bad hailstorm about to explode. Then the roar of a wind I'd never experienced before careened around the small second floor of the house where I was, and I was wide awake.

I was sure the giant cottonwood tree next to the house would fall on the house, plummeting right into the wall of my studio and office. I grabbed my MagLite flashlight, which I always keep next to my bed for such occasions, and went into the computer room right next to my bedroom. The walls were groaning. I cracked open the door to the second-floor deck to peer out and quickly shut it. Branches were snapping off the cottonwood tree and flying across the yard. Huge, heavy branches.

I jerked the FireWire cord out of the back of my external backup hard drive and set it just inside the inner hallway, trying to make decisions while still groggy.

Running downstairs, I discovered that Mom and Dad were up, worriedly looking out of the windows. It didn't occur to us to not be standing in front of the plate glass windows with branches whipping through the air.

"What's going on?" I asked Mom.

"I don't know."

I tried to look out the huge picture window into our front yard, and then out the front door to the more open side of the yard, but opaque sheets of rain blocked visibility from just a few feet in front of me. The view out the large plate glass window in the dining room was like a murky aquarium, thick green water full of debris.

The wind grew louder. I figured Dad's airplane, tied down in a three-sided open-air hangar, its wide mouth facing the south into the wind, would be trashed.

Mom ran back upstairs with me, and I unhooked the tower of my computer. I decided I'd set that in the inner hallway and away from the southern wall that seemed to be taking a beating.

I didn't know how much longer the trees or the house would take this lashing. We all waited, listening to the oddly comforting sound of the NOAA computerized voice coming over the storm radio as it monotoned out the towns that would be hit next. I groaned when I heard that Nekoma was on the list; they were to celebrate their town centennial the following weekend and had worked hard to spruce up the town. We never once thought of heading into our basement, but waited, somewhat silenced by the massive sound and fury beating down on the house in torrents of rain and wind.

At around 6 a.m., the storm lessened and moved on. It had only lasted about 15 minutes. Our yard was a mess.

Cottonwood branches were strewn about in a clear wind path, stretching all the way across the yard. Trees were snapped off and lying on the ground throughout our backyard and in our shelterbelt around the house. A very large and beautiful tree in the backyard had tipped over, roots and all, heaving up the ground. It had fallen onto another large tree, causing that one to start to heave, but stop the first tree from falling on the house. The airplane and all the buildings on this side of the road were fine. Even the little storage shed, a tiny sitting duck out at the end of the driveway with no protection from anything, was undamaged. The shed holds a lot of stuff for me and my siblings, from keepsakes to diplomas to other things we aren't using right now. All our shingles were fine. I was amazed.

Across the road, at my grandparents' farm, was a different story.

The oldest structure on the farm, a rat-infested little granary, was still standing, minus two covers. The largest structure on the farm, a gloriously huge three-section barn of ingenious design that my sister and I had marveled at and played in as kids, was completely sheared off and collapsed. Debris, roof, and wall sections were strewn in a north-east pattern across the pens and into the yard.

The absence of the structure in the horizon was astonishing to me. It had never not been there, this huge red barn. But the Gothic barn next to it was fine.

Following the path of the wind that screamed through my grandparents' farm was fairly simple. It had caught the water tank on a truck parked at the corner of the pasture, picked the tank up and tossed it into a slough a fair distance away, like a crumpled Styrofoam cup. Next came the barn, filling with wind, walls buckling, collapsing in on itself. Then it veered past the Gothic barn and hit a section of evergreen trees, uprooting and tipping over eight of them, the weight of the evergreen bringing down three or four more trees in the rows next to them. Wind had also whirled into my dad's shop, buckling out the back doors, but leaving it intact. The trees between the shop and the house were snapped and tipped, with at least six tipped over, roots and all. The three huge and beautiful evergreens planted next to the top had their tops sheared off, leaving behind splintered trunks jutting from the ground. The house was fine. All of the bins were safe. The large ladder leading to the top of one was still in place. The augers were fine.

Down the road to the west of our place, where my grandfather grew up, one of my favorite buildings finally collapsed. It was a sheep/pig barn, and I have drawn and painted it a lot, particularly for my senior BFA show at college. I fondly called it a Prairie Basilica because of some aspects of its architecture. It had recently started to lean, the beginning of the end, but this storm brought it down. I will miss seeing that structure on the horizon, as I round the corner on the road to home, more than anything. It sat regally on a slight hill, facing the north, a large and unusual building to say the least.

It's strange how selective the wind can be in these kinds of storms.

We all piled into the Jeep and headed down the road to my other grandparents' farm to see how the structures had fared. The massive amount of rain was causing our already questionable road to succumb to the rising sloughs on either side.

We arrived at the farm and were relieved to see the large barn housing equipment still standing. The lean-to attached to the north side of the barn was half gone. It appeared as if the west door had been left open, with the wind rushing inside and exploding the wall out. The wall lay on the ground next to the precariously sagging roof. Dad backed the lawnmower tractor out of the damaged lean-to in case the roof should collapse. An old granary that had been in need of removal for years was still standing, but in poor condition. The wind had eaten away at the south-west corner of the structure, leaving it looking even more condemned than usual. The house had minor damage (gutters). The few trees around it had taken a beating. We pulled some of the larger branches off of the road and headed into town to see the damage.

Dad saw right away, from miles away, that the elevator in Hampden had been hit hard.

It has two huge bins attached to it on the south side, but only one was visible. We drove into town. People and vehicles were out and about, talking and looking and trying to figure out where to start cleaning up first. One house lost its garage. The roof on the old school gym lost a good portion of its shingles on the southwest side. The bar lost its windbreak around the door, but, as the oldest original building still in town, it was still the oldest original building still in town. Some people we talked to joked about how there would probably be more volunteers to fix that little windbreak than for any other clean-up project in town, imagining people lining up to help in order to get free beer.

The Hampden Mall was fine, although the sign out front was leaning. The main thing was the extensive tree damage and the elevator. Trees were down, lying across the roads and streets, with a few trees on houses. The elevator, though, was where the pick-up trucks and people were starting to gather. The storm had crushed the massive bin and crumpled it to the ground, and debris spread out to the immediate area. A portion of the roof had blown off and fallen down to the first-level office, puncturing the roof there. An unspoken concern was that Cenex Harvest States wouldn't see fit to fix it, and we'd have no elevator after this.

There's nothing like being around pick-up trucks and farmers and people from the community who, after a storm, all head into town to see how the town fared. They talked and compared stories and maybe took the edge off what had just happened. One thing noted not only by my mom and me, but others, was that we were glad this hadn't happened last year. Our town held its centennial at the end of June, and the mess this storm made would have been a nightmare to clean up and get the city back into shape for the centennial. However, there are about eight or more towns up here this year that are in the midst of centennials this summer, and I hoped none of them were hit like this, though I knew from the radio that Nekoma had been.

Next, we headed to a friend's house who was gone for the weekend. Dad wanted to make sure everything was fine. From a distance he could see the large windmill was down, and worried it had landed on farm machinery that was parked there. The long, winding driveway was impassable with many downed trees, so we went to the second entrance now blocked by the large windmill. Driving around the windmill on the grass, we could see that the machinery was fine and so were all the buildings. The trees looked like they had been through a meat grinder. On our way back home, we noticed the mail from the mailbox had been strewn about on the road.

The power was out most of the day, and I was surprised to see it back on as soon as it was. Power lines were snapped, tipped, or dragging dangling wires up and down the highways. On our way to church, Mom and I stopped at Starkweather and were appalled at the damage. The streets were lined with downed trees in places, much like Hampden. The sound of chain saws and the number of people already out and at work, with backyard grills getting ready for a big lunch, reminded me how much I love the people around here.

At Garske, two large bins were crushed, and the elevator had sustained some serious damage. Later in the day, on our way back home, Starkweather looked very different. The amount of cleanup in both Hampden and Starkweather astonished me, a testament to the hard work of North Dakotans and farmers with a lot of equipment. These small towns don't have huge street crews. It's pretty much up to the people to get things done and help their neighbors.

Tomorrow our fun begins.

One of my sisters, who visited today with her family, is coming up again tomorrow to help clean up, and maybe the other will in a few days. It'll be a day of chainsaws, hauling, and general sweating in the humid and mosquito-infested weather that has now settled in and won't leave until it breaks with the help of a thunderstorm.

When dad, my sister, and I flew over the region this afternoon, the damage seemed so small. On the ground, the view is very different. I am again reminded of how small we are on the face of the planet. I am reminded of something I read about the average (average, not even severe) thunderstorm having the power of an atomic bomb. When I think of the miles of thunderhead stacked above me as I look from the ground, I should be terrified. I was this morning.

Before my sister left today, I could see the thunderheads building far to the east.

I didn't think much of them, the laxity at the power of the weather easily slipping back into place. Dad, though, commented on them.

And he was right.

The Grand Forks area and the eastern part of the state got hit with a bunch of severe thunderstorms and a couple of tornadoes that touched down. My sister and her family got to drive home, heading right into the mess.

I've had about had enough of severe summer weather, thank you very much.

Still, you have to have a sense of humor. One of the first things my dad said as we ventured out after the storm and saw the large red collapsed barn wasn't anger or disbelief.

"Good thing we never got around to putting that expensive new roof on the barn," he said, eyeing the pile of rubble capped off nicely by the roof that had desperately needed repair.

Later this evening as he joked about the barn with his friend, the one whose house we had checked on, he commented on the possibility of another severe storm coming through and how it could be a benefit.

"The first storm brought the barn down. The second one lit the rubble on fire with lightning. Cheapest barn pull-down ever," he joked.

Then there was the usual banter about whose trees looked worse, because everything is a competition. And then, when I handed over the forlorn-looking wet mail that had blown across the road, the friend commented that this was a pretty standard-looking mail delivery from the Post Office.

We wondered if Governor Hoeven would visit the storm-damaged areas. Dad said he only wanted to see Hoeven if he would help pick up branches.

"You could get President Bush help out at your place," he joked, to which the friend answered that he didn't know if he'd like that or not.

"He'd probably take one look and drop a bomb on it."

Other aspects of this morning's storm:

1. The map is an approximate estimation of the path of the storm, made by me.

2. Leeds and Churchs Ferry may have been hit by a tornado, or maybe just the same high winds felt by the rest. The damage was similar, although ripped-up sidewalks in Churchs Ferry were unusual, along with some of the damage to an elevator.

3. Walhalla's mayor estimated the city lost between 2,000 to 3,000 trees.