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45 Degrees North: Weather Sense [1]
['Donna Kallner', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2025-04-04
Not taking weather into account is a great way to make bad decisions with lasting effects. Weather can and will disrupt everything from vacation plans to getting parts for car repairs. It affects agriculture and the food supply chain. Weather cuts us off from the power grid, shuts down air travel, forces school closings, challenges businesses, and determines whether a medical helicopter can fly to your aid after a crash on a rural road.
That’s why so many rural folks keep one eye on the sky and the other on a weather app: Out here, when you play chicken with Mother Nature and lose, you can be on your own regretting your choices for a long time before help comes.
After 35 years as a first responder and search and rescue volunteer in rural northern Wisconsin, I’m no longer surprised at how little weather sense many people have. Or that they ignore warnings, argue with sensible advice, fail to notice changing conditions, dismiss developments that are inconvenient, and act like a 10-day forecast comes with a money-back guarantee.
But I remain optimistic that people can learn from stuff other people did and wish they hadn’t, and stories of close calls and disasters averted. Here are a few.
Particularly Dangerous Situations (PDS). Here at 45 degrees north, we don’t take chances when the National Weather Service gives conditions the PDS label. That wording is used in situations that indicate the potential for long-lived, strong and violent tornadoes, deadly thunderstorms, and now also extreme wildfire conditions.
Nowadays, we carry cell phones with weather apps and opt in to receive push alerts about severe weather. Typically, those apps are built around data collected by and communicated from the National Weather Service. But back in 2007, we relied on local television meteorologists to track storms and relay warnings. In early June of that year, they started talking about a PDS several days in advance of an anticipated storm. So on June 7, we turned up the volume on our TV, went to the basement, and listened as the storm tracked in our direction. We knew it was close when our power went out. A few minutes later, an EF3 tornado passed a mile from our house. It was on the ground for at least 40 miles and was more than a half-mile wide at times.
My husband and I were among the first responders on the scene here after that tornado passed. When we arrived, the resort on the west side of the highway was gone, and debris from it was windrowed up against trees on the east side of the highway. The debris pile was so deep we couldn’t tell if there were vehicles buried in it, let alone people.
Gimme shelter. We were lucky that day. But it got us thinking about mail carriers, UPS drivers, liquid propane delivery people, and others who are frequently on the road in rural areas. Unlike urban and suburban areas where there’s a CVS or Walgreens on every corner, it can be tricky finding a place to shelter. So we tell delivery drivers they are always welcome in our basement.
And it has become a habit for us to think about where we could shelter, if necessary, on search operations and other situations. For example, when I work the polls on election day in my rural municipality, we have an emergency protocol if a tornado tracks toward us: I’m to pull the fire department’s water tender out of its bay in the garage, then we move ballots, tabulator and poll books downstairs into that space to shelter poll workers and voters.
Won’t happen here. Last winter, a young friend told me (with all the authority of an adolescent male) that this area doesn’t get tornadoes. Or if we do, they’re rare because Wisconsin isn’t in Tornado Alley. Technically, that’s true. And yet, tornadoes are not rare here. They weren’t rare where I grew up, either, although Indiana isn’t technically in Tornado Alley as well. And yet, I don’t remember a time in my life when tornado awareness wasn’t important.
My sister spent her career working in western Massachusetts, where tornadoes are, in fact, rare. One day she saw a group of people gathered at a 4th floor window, looking puzzled at what they saw outside. When she saw the green cast to the sky, she recognized it as tornado weather and herded those folks down to the basement like they were a dairy herd and she was the boss cow. I would trust that farm girl’s weather sense over any map of where tornadoes “should” or “shouldn’t” strike.
Wind. My sister now lives in a rural area on an island in the Atlantic. Her recent cataract surgery was delayed because the wind was too strong for the plane carrying her new lens to land. High winds are not uncommon there. Nor are tourists who disregard weather conditions and go to the most rugged and inaccessible parts of the island to hike, get lost, wander around until after dark, and then call the authorities to come save them.
Flexible plans. Years ago (long before cell phones), I guided canoe camping trips in the Sylvania Wilderness Area in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My job was to foster weather awareness (among other things) in clients. So we always had a plan that was flexible enough to not have to paddle out in strong winds and rough waves.
I try to be flexible, too, when traveling to Lower Michigan because it involves crossing the suspension bridge that connects the Upper and Lower Peninsulas. I’ve crossed that bridge on days so windy they reduced the speed limit to a crawl and required drivers to follow a pace car on the inside lane to avoid being blown into the water far below. When the wind gets worse than that and they close the bridge, I wouldn’t want to make the crossing anyway.
I’ve also been windbound on Washington Island in Lake Michigan because wind and waves made the Death’s Door crossing too dangerous for the car ferry. That just gave me an extra day to enjoy the island. But someone in the final weeks of pregnancy might want to watch the forecast carefully and get off the island before the ferry shuts down.
Economic impacts. High winds can pose serious economic impacts. In a 10-month shipping season, Great Lakes fleet vessels sailing under the U.S. flag can move more than 90 million tons of cargo vital to American industry, infrastructure, and power. The Great Lakes are littered with vessels whose wrecks might have been avoided if their captains had been able to use weather modeling and tools available today. With an estimated 20% reduction in personnel from the current administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will be forced to abandon some operations that support one-third of America’s gross domestic product.
Agriculture. Agriculture is just one sector of the economy that would see negative effects. And with such a small percentage of our population actively engaged in agriculture nowadays, I suspect there are many people who don’t fully grasp the relationship between weather and weather forecasting and the cost and availability of the food they put in their mouths.
But I’m old enough to remember when farmers had to rely on a bum knee or shoulder to predict the weather. Some joints were pretty accurate. But I think it’s fair to say few farmers would prefer that system to one informed by data and tools collected, analyzed, and communicated via the National Weather Service (a function of NOAA) or any of the private sector weather services built upon NWS data.
Connecting to weather. I’m lucky to live in an area rural enough to have some local TV meteorologists who still recognize and report on how weather may affect agriculture. It probably sounds quaint to visitors to hear reports on when it may be favorable to cut hay. But a farmer uses that information to harvest feed for the cattle that produce milk and meat to feed your family. My family doesn’t cut hay or raise cows anymore. But I still eat, so it still matters to me how the weather might impact my family.
The late freeze that comes when fruit trees are in bloom probably means a reduced harvest and higher prices coming. So I might freeze and can extra rhubarb to make up for passing on peaches we won’t be able to afford. The 10-day forecast won’t tell you that. But that’s the kind of weather sense I was raised with.
Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin, where she’s too far out in the country to hear a tornado siren. She’s still on a mission to get rural elders signed up for severe weather text alerts.
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