UNUSUAL FALL BLIZZARD - OCT 3-7, 2013

One Week Ago
On September 29, 2013, we traveled thru the Hills visiting places we loved to see in the fall when the leaves are changing color.  We started at Roubaix Lake, then to Hanna Campground near Cheyenne Crossing, and then to Roughlock Falls.  As if it had been planned, we met A Marj and U Richard at the viewing area at the bottom of Roughlock Falls.  They had been at a High School Reunion in Sturgis earlier that morning and decided to come visit the falls as well.  We hadn't been to Iron Creek Lake since Matt was a baby, so after saying good bye to A Marj and U Richard and hiking back down to Latchstring Inn parking area, we decided to try to find Iron Creek Lake again.  It was about 12 miles past Roughlock Falls over some very washboardy roads thru some beautiful aspen and birch stands.  Then we journeyed into Spearfish and visited Kathy and John for a little while.  The day was beautiful with the temps in the high 60s to low 70s.  The fall colors were almost at the peak, with only some reds not quite there yet.  But that was Sunday.  See facebook photos of the fall colors:  https://www.facebook.com/rdub.buchanan/media_set?set=a.10153299435115246.1073741830.633845245&type=3

Thursday Oct. 3, 2013
In the last daylight hours of Thursday evening October 3, it started to rain.  The rain turned to snow about midnight.  The weather report was for a pretty good sized storm moving thru on Friday and Saturday.

(NOTE - you can see a slide show anytime by double clicking on any of the pictures,)

Friday Oct. 4, 2013
So we awoke the next morning Oct 4th to about 8 inches of freshly fallen snow as you can see on the furniture on the patio.

 

 

We had planned a toy workshop for our house starting at 9 am - but when the snowplow slid off the road near our house, I decided that nobody else should be driving either, so I sent out an email to cancel the workshop.  Most people had already come to the conclusion that this was a good day to stay home.

 

 

 

 

 

The weatherman said we could expect power outages from falling trees because the trees still had their leaves, and the wet snow would cause tree branches to break.  Also he said we could expect another 14" before the storm was over.  We could also expect high winds of 50 to 70 mph and possible accumulations of 31 inches.  Friday morning, it was 31 degrees, with 8-14 inches of snow covering the Black Hills.  The first announcement on the radio was that there was no school anywhere in the Black Hills on Friday.   I went to the basement to watch local TV news and found that there was no DirecTV signal.  I looked out the bedroom window and it was covered with several inches of wet snow.  I was planning to get bundled up and go clean it off, but other events overtook this.

 

Our first power outage happened at 10:15 am, but was back on in twenty minutes.  The second outage happened at noon, but came back on at 2 pm.  The third outage happened about 5 pm, and stayed off for three days and two nights, with power restored at 11:45 am on Sunday Oct 6th.  After digging out the candles and flashlights, we prepared for a dark cool night.  We had already brought in some extra firewood, so we got the fireplace going, and lit up the candles. 

 

Saturday Oct. 5, 2013

 

The next morning with no power, we were feeling somewhat isolated and we kinda started wondering if this was happening everywhere.  We had a whole lot more snow on the ground than when we had gone to sleep.

 

 

Sometime that morning, we remembered how you can put batteries in those little transistor radios and pick up some local news.  We loaded up the little radio with four AA batteries and tuned in to KOTA radio 1380 on the AM dial.  This is the station we always listened to as kids when you wanted to hear the local news.  The announcer had stayed at a local hotel downtown overnight because he couldn't see to drive home in the blizzard. 

 

The temperature in our house was 54 degrees inside and 25 degrees outside.   Even with the fireplace going all day, the temperature stayed pretty much the same.  The wind was still blowing, with strong gusts.  The snow had pretty much subsided.  There was some blue sky off to the west.  We were fine; we had food, and we had water, and we had some wood for the fire.

 

From the radio we learned that I-90, the main highway across the state, was closed from Murdo (middle of SD) to Sheridan (middle of WY) - a stretch probably 350 miles long.  Truckers and other travelers were stranded along the highway and at truck stops and hotels along the way.  Our highway 44 was closed from Rapid City to Hiway 385.  Rapid City streets had been ordered CLOSED to all travel from now until Sunday morning at 6 am to allow emergency vehicles and street maintenance vehicles time to clear the roads.  There were over 48,000 people without power initially.  After several hours, power was restored to much of Rapid City.  Rapid City Airport (RAP) was closed and was without power.  Our neighbor Jim had made it to his driveway with his 4 wheel drive pickup and got stuck on the long road into his house.  He tried to dig it out for over an hour, but ended up just leaving it where it stopped, halfway to his house. 

 

The patio needs a little attention - we have no way to cook without using the BBQ.

Unusual drift pattern - the porch had a couple feet of snow this time.

Here's the grandkids's slide in the winter!

Nice warm fire felt good on the cool days and evenings.

The egress window in the downstairs family room filled up - this needed some attention too.

Snow formed arcs across the bottom on the windows.

The log bin is about half full with a few days to go.

Hamburgers cooked in the snow taste so good!!!



Blue sky on the horizon at the end of Saturday.

 

Sunday Oct. 6, 2013

 

So now it looked like this might be the normal way of life for a few more days, so we took stock of our wood supply.  We had burned up most of what we had brought in.  I had carefully stashed more wood in the shed to keep it dry.  Well, there was a pretty good drift in front of the shed.  There was also a really big drift between the house and the path to the shed.  We could get into the shop from the breezeway door, so we decided to go thru the shop and out the back door and make a path to the shed that way.  There was no getting out of removing the drift covering the door to the shed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 So I got bundled up, cleared the path to the shed, and brought in more wood.

 

 

Here's the view from the laundry room - there's a drift about 5' deep all across the front of the garage.

The barbecue is cleared but of course ran out of propane so we cleared the snow from the second (backup) grill.

You can see the obstruction between the kitchen and the shed.

The walkway to the door to the shop needs attention.

The walkway along the garage is about 2-3 feet deep.

 So about noon on Sunday the power came on.  About 5 pm that evening, the water ran out.  We have a water association with a reservoir located up the hill from the house.  They can store about 3 days supply in the reservoir.  Since the pumps down on Rapid Creek hadn't had power for the last three days, it seemed to make sense that the water would run out.  So then we switched to a water generation mode.  We had plenty of water in the form of snow, but not much to drink or use for showers or toilets.  We were told it could be until Saturday before the power is restored to the pumps, so we decided we needed to get serious.  We put the grandkids' swimming pool to use to hold the melting snow.  Also used the bathtub, garbage cans, trash cans, storage bins, metal buckets, and we even hooked up to the melting snow coming off the roof.

Recognize your swimming pool from the summer!

It takes a lot of melted snow to fill a bathtub!

Trash cans work!



There was a lot of melting snow coming off the roof!

The melting snow from the roof was an excellent source of water.

The water system maintenance guys located a temporary generator today and the reservoirs are being slowly refilled this evening.  We are asked to conserve until the full power is restored sometime this weekend.

Heave ho!

 

 I started on Sunday and made a path to the road about 2 feet wide.

 

 





Then I started a path wide enough for a vehicle - sorta wished I had bought that Fiat we looked at last summer. 



 



Today, aided by 74 degree weather, I finished a path to the garage.  Larry tested it when he dropped off some supplies this afternoon.



 

Larry and Linda traveled to town today and reported that the town looks like a war zone with all the downed trees and branches.

Summary

The storm broke records that go back before Grandpa Buchanan was born.  We experienced minor inconveniences compared to the devastation of livestock that happened during the storm on ranches and farms across the state.  The evening news tonight said that the wet snow stuck to the animals fur and piled up during the storm, and the strong winds just slowly froze them to death.  Ranchers are reporting from 40 to 50% of their herds have died in the storm.  This is major.  Friends from Hay Creek had up wards of 600 sheep and probably 800 to 1000 cows and calves.   They will probably have major losses.  

So that is how we saw the storm - we haven't left the homestead since Thursday evening.  But the driveway is clear now, and we are almost out of food, so tomorrow will be a grocery day.

the end