A Violent Storm

[Gary_C]

On the evening of July 1, a storm went thru NE Minnesota where I was working on a state sale. The storm started just west of the border between MN and WI near the St. Croix river and then devastated Burnett County in Wisconsin from Grantsburg to north of Danbury. This first picture is in what was a nice norway pine plantation on the west edge of Danbury.





And then just across the highway to the south.





And another picture of the south side of the highway.





This was in a campground in Danbury. Lucky the people in the campgrounds had moved to a basement nearby.





And south east of Danbury at the entrance to a lodge that was in a stand of large pines.





This is part of my sale area where I had just done my thinning. Everything of any size was put down on top of my piles.





And I did not escape in my camp site. That tree in the left of center is down on the roof of my camper. I was not there at the time but I had intended to be there. I was home and planned to drive back that evening but it got too late and I waited till the next morning.





The St. Croix State Park is just about 6 miles north and east of my sale and the campgrounds there was destroyed. Fortunately the campgrounds had been emptied at 4:00 the day before because of the state shutdown so no one was there. But our governor failed to call back the DNR to inflict maximum damage on the people of the state so the cleanup and assesment of the damage waited for three weeks and is now going to become a disaster. The DNR may not be able to sell the cleanup sales till November and if it snows or freezes before then or soon there after it will be a mess to cleanup. That's not exactly good stewardship of the state forests.

I own two other sales in the St. Croix state forest just north of the park and both of them were leveled. Now those both will become salvage sales.

Good news is that I now have a ton of work to do. Bad news is those salvage sales are not much fun to cut.

[Autocar]

Thats to bad years and years of growth gone in a few seconds. Sounds like the camper and yourself were pretty lucky. How long will that wood last will blue stain be a factor ? Good luck and work safe Bill

[jander3]

Gary,

I, too, had a chance to view this mess.   Very glad I was in the cities when this came though.  Took me 2-3 days to cut a path back to my cabin.   It really would have sucked if I had been at the cabin and had to cut my way out.

I think we were lucky the state shut down, otherwise that park would have been full...full.

I watched the guys logging that busted up Pine plantation...bad day that is for sure.

Cutting that wind blown stuff.  Don't like that much at all.


Jon

[Ron Scott]

What a mess and loss of pine forests. Hopefully the salvage can get underway in a timely manner. Many campers can be thankful for the State's shutdown before the storm.

[barbender]

Well, Gary, I'd rather cut that salvage pine in a processor than any other way, at least. What a mess. One of my friends is heading down to Hinckley to cut some salvage pine for Rieger, I assume it is from the same storm.

[red oaks lumber]

alot of land owners have been callin asking about have their wood sawn, told them to have it pulped. t&t logging is going in and chipping everthing.
about 8 miles west of me a 11yr. old girl was killed in that storm, she was running for the camper when a tree fell on her :(

[SwampDonkey]

The 5000 ha blow down of 1995 in the Christmas Mountains was a 3 year salvage. There's not much for mature timber on them mountains now if you look at Google earth, just down in the gullies and streams.


You've got your work cut out for you in that mess.

The tree thinners that went up later to brush out after the salvage said it was thicker than anything you could imagine. They were walking on the cut off little tree stumps all day. That's hard walking. No matter what the pay rate was, you couldn't make your weekly cheque. Barely make any head way in it per day.

[Decked]

Wow, brings back memories :
I was blessed with salvaing 110 acres of that in the 1985 tornadoes that went thru here.
Dangerous stuff to work with, trees under stress & twisted. I had a lot of black cherry trees, We'd get the saw half-way thru them & they'd practically explode. I had the skidder backed out on a brushpile, My cutter said the skidder was 15 ft. off the ground :-\

We wound up putting a choker around the butt, tighten up good, then cut the root bag off.

Be careful!!

The one good thing, that will be one heck of a blackberry patch in 3 years ;)

[thecfarm]

That is too bad. I hate to see things like that happen.