WATCHING FOR TORNADOS AND NOVEMBER 5

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024 – Today the early weather was splendiferous. I decided to get an early start for the Red Cabin and spend the day doing trail work in the “tree garden” before Beth joins me tomorrow to enjoy a stretch of fine days, so says the forecast. Just as I pressed the ignition button of my car, today’s forecast came on the radio: sunny and warm this morning and early afternoon; storms breaking out later this afternoon and evening, some severe. A storm front stretching from the southern part of the state all the way to International Falls at the top would be packed with thunderstorms and heavy rain as the front moved through eastern Minnesota and into Wisconsin. “The Twin Cities could see some locally severe thunderstorms starting at around three this afternoon,” the weather guy said.

The ”Twin Cities,” I repeated to myself. Not “northwest Wisconsin.” Wishful thinking; I knew he’d singled out the metro area because that’s where most of MPR’s listeners reside. But so be it. I was ready for some Red Cabin time, and it would take just under three hours to get there—time to get underway without further ado.

All went according to plan. After unloading the car at my destination, I jumped on the shoreline path and hiked the length of it past the old Björnholm cabin. A strong wind out of the southeast roughed up the surface of the lake and sent waves crashing onto the shore. The trees swayed as they sang in a mighty chorus, but nothing felt ominous about the weather. Sunshine ruled the skies, danced all over the lake and filled every corner of the woods. What a perfect day at the lake!

After hiking most of my trails, I set to work extending one toward the marsh behind a part of the “garden” I’ve named—but not yet posted—as djurgården in Swedish (“the animal [game] garden”), where I planted a couple dozen white pine six years ago. As I clipped and pruned away, my phone rang. It was Beth.

“Did you know,” she said, “there’s a tornado watch for Hayward [eight miles away] this evening?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“It’s supposed to storm down here too; it’s already blowing kind of hard. How’s the weather up there now?”

I gave her my worry-free, on-the-scene report. We then went on to other subjects.

When I returned to the cabin a half hour later to attend to some business email, I casually checked the local weather forecast. Gulp! Shouting at the top of the page was, “Severe Weather Alert,” and sure enough, it included a tornado watch—from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. this evening.

Normally, I take such warnings in stride, but two factors weighed upon my thoughts. First was the pattern everywhere around the world, it seems, of increasingly extreme and abnormal weather. A tornado watch in the second half of September in northwestern Wisconsin? Hmmm. The new normal? Second but having nothing to do with the weather, was a neighbor’s catastrophe a little over a month ago: their place burned to the ground. Impossible! I’d thought, when I first heard about it, but now . . . if our neighbor’s well-appointed lake home could be destroyed by fire, who’s to say the wind can’t blow our cabins in?

I then made the mistake of checking the radar map of the region. I suddenly felt like a Red Army officer in western Ukraine in the early morning of June 22, 1941 looking at reconnaissance photos of Germany forces lunging toward our frontier. The impending attack loomed massive. I played the 90-minute time-lapse radar projection repeatedly and watched as the ugly center of one of numerous sprawling cells moved straight across our lake about an hour after nightfall. Worse, an even bigger, deeper purple cell was behind it, moving northeast from the area just southwest of the lake and threatening to unleash unforgiving fury over the very ground I occupied.

By this time I was distracted from my early evening hunger. What should I do? What could I do? Relocate to the Björnholm cabin, which has a basement? Be prepared to duck into the inhospitable four-foot-high crawl space under the Red Cabin—that is, remove all the stuff over the trap door . . . or . . . hide out in the downstairs bathroom, which is on the other side of the kitchen wall where the refrigerator stands? Jump in the car and drive . . . where, smack into the now fast approaching wall of weather? To avoid having to make a decision, I turned my focus elsewhere: power. With millions of trees hanging over lines, we often lose electricity when it storms. Ahead of the onslaught, I thought, I should ensure that my phone and laptop are fully charged. Check. Keeping my headlamp close would also be a good move. Check. Need, want any food out of the fridge? Now might be the best time to go for it. Check.

After making these preparations, I re-examined the updated radar: massive cells expanding and moving closer.

Just before sunset, I decided to put the radar images aside in favor of a real-time, real-look at the sky from the vantage point of the dock. By this time the wind was howling, and what had seemed to that point theoretical was now looking quite likely to happen. As the imaginary Soviet officer, I was no longer examining reconnaissance photos. Through high-powered binoculars, I was staring at real German panzers, artillery, infantry; an offensive juggernaut. The western and southern skies were full of high meteorological drama, changing by the second and conspiring with the setting sun to spread all across the land, abject fear ahead of the initial barrage, followed by scorched-earth destruction. As I stood like a human weathervane turning wildly in the wind, I knew that it was too late to seek reinforcements; too late to ask Stalin for an order allowing retreat. With the soldiers under my command, I was staring down historic storm and fury.

After taking a few photos, I conferred with my thoughts, which coalesced around three ideas:

First, fate and nature are fickle. If tornadic winds rose and struck with full fury in the dark, the first rays of dawn would reveal a radically altered landscape. Trees that had withstood more than a century of weather wars might tortuously dismembered; the Red Cabin itself might be reduced to a pile of unorganized Brobdingnagian toothpicks. All my efforts to plant for the future—my hundreds of six-year-old saplings—would be smashed to the ground. Yet, if none of this were to be this time around, there’s nothing to preclude it from happening with the next storm this season, next year, in five years or a decade. As deep and long as my bonds to this place are, in the hands of fate and nature those attachments are as fragile as a Ming Dynasty vase knocked off its museum pedestal by child running by to catch up to his parents.

Second, the impending storm is like the looming election. Watches and warnings are being issued with increasing frequency: “It’s gonna be a close one,” and “If ____ wins, America is as good as over.” What forces will the outcome produce? Will we recognize the political landscape the morning—or the week—after Election Day? Will an intervening event or revelation divert just enough votes from one candidate to another for the nation to avoid a catastrophe[1]?

Third, just as California has dodged “the Big One” thus far and perhaps for a millennium to come, so could this region avoid a blow-out catastrophe until the next ice age descends upon it. Or not . . . which circles back to the capricious nature of fate and the volatile fate of nature.

As darkness closed in and the wind velocity jumped a level, I noticed a fisherman about a 100 meters from shore. Surprised and curious, I trained my binocs on his boat and took his measure: he had white hair under his camou cap and by his unhurried movements I saw that he was neither prematurely white nor concerned about the weather. He wore jeans and a gray PFD vest over a lighter gray T-shirt. He paid close attention to his onboard illuminated screen with its fish/depth app; less attention to his yellow lab, which stood with its front paws on the gunwale toward the stern and its nose downward toward the water. I guessed the fisherman was around my age. Was he foolish to be out in this weather, testing fate? I wondered. Or had fate already tested him throughout life, and was he now simply doing—why not—what he loved best, dangers be damned?

At the start of this paragraph, the tornado watch expired 10 minutes ago. Thus far, not a twig nor a drop of rain has fallen. Before entering the U.S.S.R. the Germans turned around and retreated without having fired a shot. And after November 5, roughly 49% of the nation’s voters won’t be wringing their hands, while the other 49% will . . . until the current storm blows over and the next one looms over the horizon.

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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson

[1] Emblematic of our times, each side predicts “disaster” if the other side prevails.