2022, gardening, Uncategorized, Weather

Big Storm

31 Comments

At about 4:30 yesterday afternoon a huge thunderstorm roared through town. Husband and I were at work. The wind was well over 60 MPH, and the rain was torrential. For a while it was impossible to see anything out of the office windows due to the rain and wind.

Driving home was difficult, what with the flash flooding. The water was halfway up the tires of our van in some intersections. I never saw rain like this in our 35 years here.

We arrived to this when we got home. That is our front yard veggie garden.

There was no hail in the part of town our office building is in, but our home neighborhood got nailed. The hail was about 1/2 inch in diameter. I think much of the garden is lost.

The rhubarb didn’t fare too well, either

This is disappointing, to say the least. We still have some cabbage plants and cantaloupes to put out, and I think the chard, kohlrabi, and peas are ok. Tomatoes, peppers, and pole beans may be lost. It is too early to say. We never had a hail storm like this, either, so I don’t know how plants recover after something like this.

Husband will be in Bismarck today, and is going to Lowes to check for tomato and pepper plants. There aren’t many bedding plants left in our greenhouses here.

Got any hail stories? How do you handle disappointments?

31 thoughts on “Big Storm”

  1. RENEE I am so sorry your garden was hit so badly. You and your husband wow us with your harvests and recipes. Our garden had similar hail damage earlier this summer but fortunately some of the plants were so small they somehow survived. I would try and replant.

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  2. We had three hailstorms in the space of about two weeks here in Owatonna several years ago. Saw obvious damage to our almost 20-year-old roof. Roofers did booming business for the next several months. However, our insurance company denied our claim to replace the roof until we found out everyone else in the area with that insurance was getting their roofs replaced by the insurance company. We appealed and later found out that the higher-up execs in the company were getting their roofs done for free. Once word got out, the rest of us got free replacements. Kind of sneaky. Didn’t sit too well with us since it was the insurance company my wife worked for for 16 years. 😦

    I’ve never seen that huge hail that makes the news–baseball size, golf ball size, etc. Biggest hail I’ve seen was maybe one-inch diameter.

    I don’t get disappointed very much (hope for the best, prepare for the worst) but when I do, I tend to shrug it off. I don’t mope or wallow in self-pity.

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  3. The downspouts and rain gutters are full of ripped leaves. The yard is covered in leaves. In some places the hail was 4 inches deep.

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  4. Oh I’m so sorry, Renee! I hope that more of it survives than is evident right now.

    I remember driving once in a hail storm where I finally just had to pull over and wait it out. And short burst of larger hail, but I don’t recall anything that decimated a garden.

    I tend, when disappointed, to look for what’s still available to me.
    There are disappointments, and then there are DISAPPOINTMENTS. With the bigger ones, all you can do is let yourself grieve the losses, and let that grieving change (it never goes away) as you… look around at what’s left and put your energy in those things.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Is the header photo of the storm you just experienced? Those are threatening clouds.

    In 1976 I planted a lovely garden in the yard of our rental house in Boone, Iowa. The soil there is the rich, black, loamy soil of prairie. The tomatoes were lush and green until the hailstorm which left hail like that in your picture. It left tomatoes like that, too—pulverized. I could smell the crushed tomato plants through the open windows.

    Regarding disappointment, I am often not composed. I feel the disappointment, then anger. I stomp my feet for a bit, then get over myself and move on. But I have to push back at it before I resolve it.

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  6. Renee how did your new puppy do with the storm? You may not know til the next storm. My cat reacts when the rain whips against the windows & heads under the bed if lightening & thunder.

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    1. He was in his crate in the living room and we were at work, so I am not sure how he was during the storm. He was extremely glad to see us when we got home and was very demanding and needy, much more so than usual. I am not sure why. Perhaps he sensed our distraction and angst about the garden. I think he feels very safe in his crate.

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  8. So sorry, Renee. That sure looks like a devastating storm. Calling it a disappointment, to see your extensive garden ripped to shreds like that, doesn’t really do justice to what you and Chris must be feeling at the moment. I’m glad you’re going to replant at least some of what was lost. Those are amazing photos, by the way. What a mess.

    I’m hopeful that some of your plants will recover, nature is amazing that way. But reality probably is that you won’t need to spend as much time in the kitchen come harvest time, putting up stuff for the winter. You probably won’t need to buy another freezer to hold it all, either. You may have more leisure time to enjoy with your new puppy.

    I deal with situations like this by trying to find the silver lining, but only after I have processed my initial feelings of shock, anger, or whatever comes up. That’s more likely to involve tears than stomping of feet. I tend to not linger there long, but instead find some activity that will make me calm down and feel better.

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  9. Shoot. That is such a rotten feeling. You don’t even get crop insurance on your garden crops.
    I take hail insurance out on the corn and soybeans. It’s not real expensive, and it paid out about 8 years ago. Enough to cover the premiums anyway. My crop wasn’t a total loss, but enough. Can’t get insurance on oats. And I’ve lost some good oat crops on high winds and hail. It just sucks. German Brandy sounds like the best thing for it. Go ahead and replant if you can; can’t hurt. maybe it will work out, maybe it won’t. but you won’t want to look at that all summer. Maybe you can plant something just to be beneficial to the soil for next year when tilled up this fall?

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  10. I inherited the “sh*t or get off the pot” mentality from my mother. She is an expert in this. She’s not all rainbows and sunshine but she definitely doesn’t wallow. So I guess I would say keep going, look for new bedding plants and if all else fails think of this as a year with a little more time for other things because maybe you won’t be doing as much gardening?

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    1. Nice! I love that song. Hadn’t heard that rendition before. He was the guy snoozing in the passenger seat in my old SAAB when I got that speeding ticket on the was home from Oak Center General Store.

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