253: BWCA Blowdown I-That Dark Blackish Color

Episode Transcript

[0:00:01 – 0:00:13] Erik: Maybe if the wind had blown at 80 miles per hour instead of 100 or 120, the trees would have continued to rise and return to the ground as though the earth were exhaling.
[0:00:15 – 0:00:17] Erik: But instead it loosened and pulled up big chunks.
[0:00:19 – 0:00:24] Erik: And as those trees went over, they knocked other trees over, because they’re all interlaced.
[0:00:25 – 0:00:33] Erik: The undulation was making the giant pines bend and weave and rise and drop like shocks of wheat succumbing to the sweep of a giant invisible hand.
[0:00:35 – 0:00:37] Erik: Then everyone felt an even stronger blast of wind.
[0:00:38 – 0:00:47] Erik: And the huge trees on Fish Hook and nearby Dominion and Three Mile Island and all over the heart of the Bungie Waters began to fall.
[0:01:13 – 0:01:14] UNKNOWN: Thank you.
[0:01:27 – 0:01:43] Erik: Welcome, and the rain and the wind came down, my name is Eric, hello, this is Dumble Home episode 2, 5, 3, back in the shed with my best mate, King of Notes, Adam, hello.
[0:01:44 – 0:01:47] Adam: Good evening, Eric, good to be here.
[0:01:47 – 0:01:52] Erik: Yeah, it is beyond afternoon, it’s evening, it’s not after dark yet though.
[0:01:54 – 0:01:55] Erik: It’s right in the twilight.
[0:01:55 – 0:01:56] Erik: Right in that twilight zone.
[0:01:57 – 0:01:58] Erik: It’ll be twilight for another four or five hours.
[0:01:59 – 0:02:01] Erik: It’s the long twilight.
[0:02:01 – 0:02:02] Erik: It’s the long sun.
[0:02:03 – 0:02:05] Erik: Days of the long sun are here.
[0:02:07 – 0:02:19] Erik: We are talking 25th anniversary, Gunflint, well, whole Bonjewaters, I would say, July 4th, 1999, a date which will live in infamy.
[0:02:19 – 0:02:24] Erik: I’m sure everybody that’s vaguely familiar with the Bonjewaters has heard of that date.
[0:02:24 – 0:02:31] Erik: Anybody who lives in the area probably has a story to tell about it, and even if you’ve come after that,
[0:02:32 – 0:02:38] Erik: You probably know about it, but we’re going to get into it this week and probably in the coming weeks.
[0:02:38 – 0:02:41] Erik: Good old-fashioned book report style.
[0:02:41 – 0:02:44] Erik: It’s been a while since I’ve done a book report.
[0:02:44 – 0:02:50] Erik: You kind of hammered a few last fall before we shut the shed down, but we’re back.
[0:02:51 – 0:02:53] Erik: It felt good to get back and do a book.
[0:02:54 – 0:03:01] Erik: Thank God for our good old friend, Carrie J. Griffith, for pumping out some… Another one.
[0:03:01 – 0:03:02] Erik: Another one.
[0:03:03 – 0:03:04] Erik: Just in time.
[0:03:05 – 0:03:05] Erik: It’s a hit.
[0:03:05 – 0:03:06] Erik: It’s a hit.
[0:03:07 – 0:03:08] Adam: Do people say that about books?
[0:03:09 – 0:03:10] Erik: It says it right on the back cover here.
[0:03:11 – 0:03:11] Adam: Ah.
[0:03:11 – 0:03:12] Adam: Yeah.
[0:03:12 – 0:03:13] Adam: It’s a hit.
[0:03:13 – 0:03:15] Erik: We’ve got Lee Freilich.
[0:03:15 – 0:03:16] Erik: It’s a hit.
[0:03:16 – 0:03:16] Adam: No way.
[0:03:17 – 0:03:17] Adam: Really?
[0:03:17 – 0:03:18] Adam: Yeah.
[0:03:18 – 0:03:19] Adam: That’s great.
[0:03:19 – 0:03:21] Adam: Me and Lee agree.
[0:03:21 – 0:03:23] Erik: Lee E. Freilich.
[0:03:23 – 0:03:24] Erik: Freilich?
[0:03:26 – 0:03:27] Adam: Absolutely.
[0:03:27 – 0:03:28] Adam: I’m excited for this one.
[0:03:28 – 0:03:29] Adam: It should be good.
[0:03:29 – 0:03:31] Adam: How long did it take you to read the book?
[0:03:32 – 0:03:35] Erik: I am not completely done with the book, actually.
[0:03:35 – 0:03:41] Erik: We’re very clearly not going to get through it all tonight, but I’m getting down there.
[0:03:42 – 0:03:49] Erik: It’s not quite as intense when it comes to day-to-day operations.
[0:03:49 – 0:03:54] Erik: The last one of Carrie’s books we did was the Gunsland Burning episode.
[0:03:54 – 0:04:13] Erik: a couple years ago check in on that one if you uh that was a good series if you haven’t there’s a lot of like just the logistics of how firefighting works and we gotta bump it up to an instant two and then this other command crew comes in and the hot shots from idaho are on their way and the dc 92 prop to haviland all
[0:04:13 – 0:04:33] Erik: that like after a while you’re just kind of like this is a little bit more um kind of like on the ground uh the way that it’s kind of told there is a little bit of that like how things got determined like what’s gonna happen after they realize what happened
[0:04:34 – 0:04:44] Erik: Not that there was anything boring about that, Gunflint burning the way that that was described, but it didn’t really translate in a lot of ways to great podcasting.
[0:04:45 – 0:04:54] Erik: But we get a lot of eyewitness actual testimony of people that were there, the storm, and some people that were very directly affected by it.
[0:04:55 – 0:04:58] Erik: And yeah, it should be a good time.
[0:04:58 – 0:05:01] Erik: And I think I can say that because, spoiler alert,
[0:05:02 – 0:05:03] Erik: Nobody died.
[0:05:03 – 0:05:05] Erik: The miracle of the whole thing.
[0:05:05 – 0:05:06] Adam: That’s crazy.
[0:05:06 – 0:05:06] Erik: Yeah.
[0:05:09 – 0:05:20] Adam: Tumble Home is a proud independent podcast, and thank you to all our Patreons for your continued support of our live in the field audio and our studio sessions like this one.
[0:05:20 – 0:05:21] Adam: Like this one.
[0:05:22 – 0:05:30] Adam: We recorded five frosty new TCC episodes this month alone, including the entire Mighty Ducks.
[0:05:31 – 0:05:34] Adam: Am I allowed to say all what we’ve got in the hopper?
[0:05:34 – 0:05:35] Adam: We’ve got a lot coming out, though.
[0:05:35 – 0:05:36] Erik: I think so, yeah.
[0:05:36 – 0:05:37] Adam: Mighty Ducks movies.
[0:05:37 – 0:05:39] Adam: Anybody out there like Mitchum?
[0:05:40 – 0:05:41] Adam: We got all the Mighty Ducks.
[0:05:41 – 0:05:42] Adam: That’s a triple deke.
[0:05:42 – 0:05:44] Adam: So Mitchum for you.
[0:05:44 – 0:05:48] Adam: $5 gets you access to the entire TCC mezzanine archives.
[0:05:48 – 0:05:51] Adam: Over 100 episodes on the best of wilderness cinema.
[0:05:52 – 0:05:54] Adam: Thank you for all your support.
[0:05:54 – 0:05:57] Adam: Keeping the servers humming.
[0:05:58 – 0:06:02] Adam: We’re having a little fun talking about movies that are vaguely related to the Boundary Waters.
[0:06:03 – 0:06:18] Adam: uh really uh it doesn’t take much for us to find an excuse to do a movie if we really want to but we do take requests too oh yeah on the whiteboard here behind eric nailed uh quite a few requests and uh i think we’ve added a few over the course of the last few weeks
[0:06:19 – 0:06:26] Erik: I think we haven’t made any firm decisions in where we’re going forward with our next, you know, now that the Mitchum Mighty Ducks series is all over.
[0:06:26 – 0:06:28] Adam: I have a couple I got my eye on up there.
[0:06:29 – 0:06:34] Adam: But we’re committed to doing more TCC episodes this summer.
[0:06:35 – 0:06:38] Adam: And we’re living the dream right now.
[0:06:38 – 0:06:38] Erik: They’re fun.
[0:06:38 – 0:06:39] Erik: I like doing them.
[0:06:39 – 0:06:40] Erik: I mean, I like doing these too.
[0:06:40 – 0:06:45] Erik: But, you know, you can listen to those TCC, Tumble Home Cinema Classics if you want.
[0:06:45 – 0:06:48] Erik: You can kind of get a little bit more of an idea.
[0:06:48 – 0:06:55] Erik: It’s not that we take this, you know, I don’t know what you would, the regular podcast.
[0:06:55 – 0:07:17] Erik: I don’t know like the main show main show you know it’s got much more structure you need if you ever listen to we’ve put out some of the teaser ones in the past you know middle of the summer when we just can’t get into the studio we’ll put one of those out a little bit more free flowing and patreon they let us swear so if you want to hear us not get loon bleeped
[0:07:18 – 0:07:21] Erik: Yeah, it’s worth $5.
[0:07:21 – 0:07:21] Erik: Just for that.
[0:07:21 – 0:07:22] Erik: Just for that.
[0:07:23 – 0:07:26] Adam: We got some really unique curses on the TCC.
[0:07:27 – 0:07:33] Adam: We do have a show sponsor tonight, but I had failed to go grab it out of the mini fridge before we hit record.
[0:07:35 – 0:07:37] Adam: If Eric can maybe read it off the board, though.
[0:07:37 – 0:07:38] Adam: It is a bunch of…
[0:07:38 – 0:07:42] Adam: It’s a New Glarus sampler pack from…
[0:07:43 – 0:07:44] Adam: Does it say on the board?
[0:07:45 – 0:07:45] Erik: Andrew…
[0:07:47 – 0:07:47] Erik: And Ben?
[0:07:47 – 0:07:49] Erik: Yeah, I think that’s right.
[0:07:49 – 0:07:50] Adam: Winchell?
[0:07:50 – 0:07:51] Adam: They went to Winchell in May.
[0:07:52 – 0:07:52] Erik: Wow.
[0:07:53 – 0:07:58] Adam: So, yeah, it was a whole 12-pack of new Glarus in bottles.
[0:07:58 – 0:08:04] Adam: I’m going to go grab one, honestly, if you want to hit pause or if you just want to, like, get into a passage.
[0:08:04 – 0:08:07] Adam: But I had one more thing I wanted to talk about before I get to your book, though, Eric.
[0:08:08 – 0:08:08] Erik: Yeah, no, that’s fine.
[0:08:09 – 0:08:15] Erik: I was just going to say I could easily fill the time during your… How far away are these samplers?
[0:08:16 – 0:08:17] Erik: They’re just in the fridge behind you.
[0:08:17 – 0:08:18] Erik: Oh, okay.
[0:08:18 – 0:08:20] Erik: I thought you had to run all the way down the house.
[0:08:20 – 0:08:25] Adam: No, I just want to give a shout because there’s four different kinds of them, and I want to make sure I give… One of them is obviously Spotted Cow.
[0:08:25 – 0:08:26] Adam: Sure, it has to be.
[0:08:26 – 0:08:30] Adam: And there’s three other Nuclearis beers in there, and they generously donated…
[0:08:32 – 0:08:33] Adam: I think it was the entire 12-pack.
[0:08:33 – 0:08:34] Adam: I don’t think they took any out of there.
[0:08:34 – 0:08:36] Adam: They should have taken a New Glarus tax.
[0:08:36 – 0:08:40] Erik: Yeah, New Glarus tax, especially for these parts.
[0:08:40 – 0:08:41] Adam: I’ll be honest.
[0:08:41 – 0:08:45] Adam: I took a few of them out of there already when I was doing yard work a while back.
[0:08:45 – 0:08:46] Erik: Any Moonmans in there?
[0:08:47 – 0:08:48] Adam: No, I don’t think there was a Moonman, though.
[0:08:48 – 0:08:49] Adam: I don’t like myself a Moonman.
[0:08:51 – 0:08:55] Adam: I just want to shout out a couple threads we have live, for one.
[0:08:56 – 0:09:04] Adam: We haven’t had a chance to talk about this since we got back from the park because this is the first episode since we got out of the Frost River Loop.
[0:09:04 – 0:09:04] Erik: That’s right.
[0:09:05 – 0:09:12] Adam: The subreddit has a thread on best packs and what new packs are out there and what kind of packs are people packing.
[0:09:13 – 0:09:17] Adam: And it’s got like an absurd amount of comments on there, which I have not gone to read.
[0:09:17 – 0:09:20] Adam: Because at this point, I think we’re going to have to do a pack episode.
[0:09:20 – 0:09:21] Adam: Have to.
[0:09:21 – 0:09:22] Erik: They kind of forced us to.
[0:09:22 – 0:09:26] Adam: You get to do an episode or two on packs, probably.
[0:09:26 – 0:09:30] Erik: Yeah, that thing exploded like a bow echo out of North Dakota.
[0:09:30 – 0:09:32] Adam: Hey, you.
[0:09:32 – 0:09:42] Adam: There’s also kind of going in correspondence with this book report series, a thread on what kind of bad storms have you camped in.
[0:09:43 – 0:09:43] Erik: Yeah.
[0:09:43 – 0:09:45] Erik: Scary storms thread.
[0:09:45 – 0:09:49] Erik: Hopefully you’re going to sprinkle in some of your storm stories going forward.
[0:09:49 – 0:09:51] Erik: Probably leave that up for a little bit.
[0:09:51 – 0:09:58] Erik: So probably none in this episode, but I think that depending on what some of the stories are would be a great accompaniment to this whole tale.
[0:09:58 – 0:09:59] Erik: I think so.
[0:10:00 – 0:10:05] Adam: And then also, this is an idea we came up with while camping.
[0:10:06 – 0:10:11] Adam: And when we got back, I managed to log into the Tumble Home Facebook page.
[0:10:11 – 0:10:12] Adam: Oh, yeah.
[0:10:12 – 0:10:13] Adam: That’s hilarious.
[0:10:13 – 0:10:15] Adam: Which still has pretty good reviews somehow.
[0:10:16 – 0:10:16] Adam: Wow.
[0:10:16 – 0:10:23] Adam: Even though we may have upset a few people on Facebook in the past with some of our posts.
[0:10:23 – 0:10:23] Adam: No.
[0:10:24 – 0:10:25] Adam: They’re very sensitive.
[0:10:25 – 0:10:26] Adam: Yeah.
[0:10:27 – 0:10:53] Adam: we uh we’re like we’re gonna put a thread on the facebook page just on what’s the worst campsite you ever stayed in yeah and just see what happens and then uh it’s a question of the week is how it’s framed but we’re intending to leave that up for like months yeah and maybe get to that get to those responses at the end of summer yeah so if anybody listening to this is obviously welcome to go find that thread and comment uh what’s your worst camps that you ever stayed on in the boundary waters
[0:10:53 – 0:10:58] Adam: I know we’re going to get a lot of cheeky responses like every campsite in the Boundary Waters is magical.
[0:10:58 – 0:11:01] Adam: No such thing as a bad campsite.
[0:11:02 – 0:11:03] Adam: But there are some bad ones out there.
[0:11:03 – 0:11:04] Adam: I want to hear all about them.
[0:11:04 – 0:11:06] Adam: I can’t wait for that series.
[0:11:07 – 0:11:10] Erik: Yeah, that’ll be fun, especially leaving it just only to Facebook.
[0:11:10 – 0:11:12] Erik: Makes a lot of sense for a question like that.
[0:11:14 – 0:11:35] Adam: Yeah, I can’t wait to find out the results and, uh, both Eric and I did see the twilight cruise of the Micho Picatinny, my favorite great lakes freighter while we were in the frost river, uh, like, um, busted its whole, uh, just a stress for a stress fracture to the whole, uh, quite a large gash.
[0:11:35 – 0:11:36] Adam: And, uh, they almost, uh, sank.
[0:11:37 – 0:11:38] Adam: Crazy.
[0:11:38 – 0:11:59] Adam: While we were out in the Boundaries, I just had to divert over to Thunder Bay and struggled into port, and they managed to get some big pumps in there, weld up the crack, and take all the ore off, and then they sent it back down to Superior to go to Fraser Shipyards for further inspection, and hopefully they’re going to fix it.
[0:11:59 – 0:12:06] Adam: But I can see a scenario in which that was the last cruise of the Michaud Picatinny that went by at Grand Marais.
[0:12:07 – 0:12:08] Adam: uh, on the solstice.
[0:12:09 – 0:12:09] Erik: Yeah.
[0:12:09 – 0:12:09] Erik: A while back.
[0:12:09 – 0:12:14] Erik: And, uh, I, it was, uh, followed by a little tug too.
[0:12:14 – 0:12:14] Erik: Yeah.
[0:12:14 – 0:12:18] Adam: I had the Helen H, uh, was tailing at us for safety in case anything went wrong.
[0:12:19 – 0:12:30] Adam: And, uh, yeah, I went out on artist point when it was going by and I got like a nice shot of the Hjortus, uh, coming into Grime Array Harbor with the Misha Peekton and the Helen H, uh,
[0:12:30 – 0:12:45] Adam: heading towards uh superior in the background and uh with the sawtooth ridge the sawtooth mountain ridges it was a pretty good shot pretty good pretty good um yeah i don’t know pretty crazy story though when i got back to it god they hit something in the middle of the lake
[0:12:46 – 0:12:46] Erik: It’s a mystery.
[0:12:46 – 0:12:48] Adam: Mystery reef.
[0:12:48 – 0:12:51] Adam: And it just turns out the boat is built in 1952.
[0:12:51 – 0:12:56] Adam: And they beat those boats like rented mules back before the Edmund Fitzgerald sank.
[0:12:56 – 0:12:58] Adam: And they actually put some regulations on them.
[0:12:58 – 0:13:02] Adam: But the damage that had already been done, that stress fracture is like years in the making.
[0:13:03 – 0:13:07] Adam: Yeah, I heard a story and it sent chills down my spine.
[0:13:07 – 0:13:16] Adam: And then I saw the Hjortus out there at the same time as the Misha Pikatin going for superior the other day was the day it almost sank.
[0:13:16 – 0:13:20] Adam: I guess the this was posted on Facebook, too, I believe.
[0:13:21 – 0:13:33] Adam: He said that the captain of the Hjortus was on a sunrise cruise and had the emergency radio on, as he would, and heard the broadcast over the emergency radio of Mayday, Mayday.
[0:13:34 – 0:13:37] Adam: And the captain apparently said on the live mic, I don’t think we’re going to make it.
[0:13:38 – 0:13:39] Adam: And it’s like, Jesus.
[0:13:39 – 0:13:43] Adam: So they really did come close to actually sinking, apparently, if you were willing to say that.
[0:13:43 – 0:13:47] Adam: Meanwhile, the captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald was like, we’re holding our own.
[0:13:47 – 0:13:48] Adam: Everything’s fine.
[0:13:48 – 0:13:48] Adam: We’re going to be fine.
[0:13:49 – 0:13:54] Adam: Yeah, so you know that must have been in pretty rough shape to actually say something like that on the emergency channel.
[0:13:54 – 0:13:54] Adam: Yeah.
[0:13:54 – 0:14:00] Adam: Anyways, they made it to Duluth last night, and I hope they are able to fix that boat.
[0:14:01 – 0:14:01] Erik: Yeah, hopefully.
[0:14:02 – 0:14:04] Erik: The thing is looking like it was in pretty rough shape, though.
[0:14:04 – 0:14:06] Erik: My God, that thing is old.
[0:14:06 – 0:14:08] Adam: Yeah, they all look pretty rough.
[0:14:08 – 0:14:10] Adam: The locks beat them up.
[0:14:10 – 0:14:13] Adam: They’re perfectly fine, but they just got a lot of scrapes on them.
[0:14:13 – 0:14:15] Erik: Sure, they’re perfectly fine as it’s just taking on water.
[0:14:15 – 0:14:16] Erik: That’s what I was saying.
[0:14:16 – 0:14:16] Erik: Yeah.
[0:14:16 – 0:14:16] Erik: Okay.
[0:14:18 – 0:14:20] Erik: All right.
[0:14:21 – 0:14:33] Erik: Yeah, I don’t know if it makes a whole lot of difference one way or another to the listeners, but we finally… Well, maybe it does.
[0:14:33 – 0:14:35] Erik: The main listeners are…
[0:14:38 – 0:14:45] Erik: Finally getting to hear what our voices sound like, recording into almost an entirely new setup here.
[0:14:45 – 0:14:45] Erik: Do we sound good?
[0:14:46 – 0:14:46] Erik: Do we sound worse?
[0:14:47 – 0:14:48] Erik: Do we sound the same?
[0:14:48 – 0:14:49] Adam: Oh, yeah.
[0:14:49 – 0:14:53] Adam: I suppose this is the first new episode, the first main show.
[0:14:54 – 0:14:58] Erik: Yeah, the first main show on the new computer, the new, at least for me, the new microphone.
[0:14:58 – 0:15:00] Erik: We finally got rid of the ghost and the machine mic.
[0:15:01 – 0:15:14] Erik: Hopefully, you’ll never have to lose my voice entirely for half of an episode, if not more, or you won’t get any of the little alien noises, whatever.
[0:15:15 – 0:15:41] Erik: that remains to be seen but i think for now i think uh smooth sailing we’ve had some good success with the tccs up to this point and we’re hoping to continue that success absolutely into the future on the main on the main show yeah i don’t have to stop every 10 minutes and check to see if the audio is still recording properly to make sure it’s not off track and then you got to go back and click and drag and get it lined up down to like the millisecond otherwise you get this weird echo
[0:15:41 – 0:15:56] Erik: yeah so far so good it’s uh it’s been worth uh it’s been worth the upgrade and uh i i just i guess i should have updated adobe i don’t know maybe that was it that was the problem the whole time was the problem so stubborn it’s stubborn like a mule the whole time
[0:16:00 – 0:16:00] Adam: I got it.
[0:16:00 – 0:16:07] Adam: Andrew and Ben dropped these off in May at the co-op, and there was a spotted cow in there.
[0:16:07 – 0:16:08] Adam: These are ice cold.
[0:16:08 – 0:16:11] Adam: Had them in the mini fridge and perfect temp.
[0:16:11 – 0:16:14] Adam: We also have a two-women cow.
[0:16:15 – 0:16:32] Adam: lager i’ve had that one before for sure a backhoe bach with a nice sun on there so that looks like a nice backhoe bach and then uh oofta what’s the oofta or the wisconsin beer allowed to uh
[0:16:35 – 0:16:35] Adam: Who knows?
[0:16:35 – 0:16:36] Adam: This one’s just the Ufta.
[0:16:36 – 0:16:37] Adam: It doesn’t have any description.
[0:16:38 – 0:16:41] Adam: I guess it’s a hearty, full-bodied, big beer.
[0:16:41 – 0:16:42] Adam: Big beer.
[0:16:42 – 0:16:45] Adam: In the Rhein-Heich-De-Gabut tradition.
[0:16:45 – 0:16:45] Adam: Nailed it.
[0:16:46 – 0:16:47] Adam: Absolutely nailed it.
[0:16:48 – 0:16:53] Erik: Ufta’s probably German in origin, maybe.
[0:16:53 – 0:16:53] Erik: I don’t know.
[0:16:53 – 0:16:55] Adam: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:16:56 – 0:16:58] Erik: Well, yeah, I don’t know, again…
[0:16:58 – 0:17:00] Adam: Thank you for the beers, gentlemen.
[0:17:00 – 0:17:00] Erik: Thank you.
[0:17:01 – 0:17:20] Erik: Not to dissuade anybody from continuing to send sponsorships, but there have been intermittent periods of abstinence from beer and all forms of alcohol by me that I’m sure if you’ve listened over the years you’ve heard, and…
[0:17:22 – 0:17:26] Erik: I don’t know if this, uh, the one that I’m on right now is, is a break.
[0:17:26 – 0:17:27] Erik: This might just be my life now.
[0:17:28 – 0:17:40] Erik: I don’t know if that necessarily matters to you listeners, uh, or not again, maybe with the new computer, we sound good, better, uh, uh, worse, the same.
[0:17:40 – 0:17:49] Erik: And I hope, uh, at the very least not drinking will, uh, at the very least stay the same and hopefully get better because, uh,
[0:17:49 – 0:17:57] Erik: Yeah, I think I’ve just reached a point in my relationship with alcohol that I don’t need it anymore and I feel
[0:17:59 – 0:18:22] Erik: better than i have in a long time in uh so many different aspects of my life and i’m not going to be that person who judges other people for drinking or tries to lecture anybody on why they shouldn’t or why they can do better without it it’s just where i’m at right now and uh yeah so cheers to you adam i’m drinking sparkly waters from here on out
[0:18:23 – 0:18:26] Adam: Yeah, I had a sparkling water during the recording of the Mighty Ducks 3.
[0:18:26 – 0:18:27] Adam: Yeah.
[0:18:28 – 0:18:30] Adam: And I am going to have a new Glarus.
[0:18:31 – 0:18:33] Adam: This is something we talked about a lot on the trip, I feel like.
[0:18:34 – 0:18:34] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[0:18:35 – 0:18:36] Adam: You know, just…
[0:18:38 – 0:19:00] Adam: the challenges of alcohol and like you know it’s a in excess a horrible thing you know and uh yeah i don’t know i feel like i i’m i’m probably not at that level where i want to just get rid of it all together but uh i’ve been being pretty good since we got back from the frost river i’ll just say that yeah i’m gonna enjoy the hell out of this new glaris that’s for sure
[0:19:00 – 0:19:03] Erik: Yeah, and you definitely should.
[0:19:03 – 0:19:14] Erik: I mean, they’re not going to, like, dump out the beers we have, and I can be a good boy with alcohol up to a certain point, and then I’m not good with it.
[0:19:14 – 0:19:18] Erik: So that’s about all I’ll say on that for now.
[0:19:18 – 0:19:28] Erik: So, yeah, but by no means do not stop sending the beers if that’s a way that you feel like you want to sponsor the show.
[0:19:28 – 0:19:28] Erik: There’s…
[0:19:29 – 0:19:31] Erik: Adam’s drinking for two now.
[0:19:32 – 0:19:34] Adam: Yeah, like, oh, more for me.
[0:19:35 – 0:19:40] Adam: If we were a Disney movie, that would be the… Would that be the joke that Disney would write?
[0:19:40 – 0:19:41] Adam: Who knows?
[0:19:41 – 0:19:41] Adam: I don’t know.
[0:19:41 – 0:19:43] Adam: More for me anyways, yeah.
[0:19:43 – 0:19:50] Adam: We still have the fridge plugged in, and I’m still going to enjoy beers during Tumble Home, but yeah.
[0:19:50 – 0:19:50] Adam: Yeah.
[0:19:52 – 0:20:06] Adam: uh thank you for the new glaris i always uh enjoy getting a taste of uh of the old country taste of home i don’t know what you call an oofta yeah it’s a big body beer um it’s not too uh not too light not too hefty
[0:20:08 – 0:20:09] Erik: You went with the Ufta?
[0:20:09 – 0:20:10] Adam: I went with the Ufta.
[0:20:10 – 0:20:10] Adam: Yeah, I don’t know.
[0:20:11 – 0:20:20] Adam: I mean, it was really hot today, so the Bach, I don’t know, the Bachobach sounded probably, although that one had the nice sunshine on the artwork.
[0:20:21 – 0:20:22] Adam: It did have some nice artwork.
[0:20:22 – 0:20:30] Adam: So I could see that being something I would go towards, but I don’t know, maybe I’ll have the Bachobach after it actually gets dark.
[0:20:30 – 0:20:34] Erik: Yeah, the Bach, you know, a Bach never really is like after a long day out in the sun working, you know.
[0:20:35 – 0:20:37] Adam: I was in the yard all day before you got here.
[0:20:37 – 0:20:39] Adam: And yeah, it was actually pretty hot.
[0:20:40 – 0:20:41] Erik: Yeah, it did.
[0:20:41 – 0:20:46] Erik: I mean, I think we’re finally into summer.
[0:20:47 – 0:20:49] Adam: Yeah, my beans are looking good.
[0:20:50 – 0:20:51] Adam: Are you picking any overhead yet?
[0:20:52 – 0:20:52] Adam: No, no.
[0:20:52 – 0:20:53] Adam: No, no, no.
[0:20:53 – 0:20:59] Adam: No, but they’re about as high as this beer bottle, probably, at least the one set.
[0:20:59 – 0:21:02] Adam: So, you know, almost getting too much rain, honestly.
[0:21:03 – 0:21:06] Adam: The garden’s a little too wet right now, but I can’t complain about that.
[0:21:07 – 0:21:09] Erik: Moving into what seems to be like a little bit of a drier period.
[0:21:10 – 0:21:14] Erik: We’ll keep you updated on that, though, climatologists at home.
[0:21:14 – 0:21:20] Erik: We got a lot of the discussion on that going forward with this book report.
[0:21:20 – 0:21:25] Erik: I did some extracurricular research on my own.
[0:21:25 – 0:21:27] Erik: I’ve always been fascinated with weather.
[0:21:27 – 0:21:29] Erik: Dew points, right?
[0:21:29 – 0:21:30] Erik: Lots of dew points.
[0:21:32 – 0:21:35] Adam: I could go into dew point YouTube for just hours and hours.
[0:21:35 – 0:21:36] Erik: Yeah, we could velocity.
[0:21:36 – 0:21:38] Erik: We’re going to talk about radar.
[0:21:39 – 0:21:41] Erik: Yeah, it’s like one of those things.
[0:21:41 – 0:21:44] Erik: I don’t know if it’s just a dad thing.
[0:21:44 – 0:21:45] Erik: Is it a guy thing?
[0:21:45 – 0:21:47] Erik: There’s just something about weather.
[0:21:48 – 0:21:49] Erik: Let’s pull up the radar.
[0:21:49 – 0:21:54] Erik: Whenever we’re in the boundary waters and there’s any kind of rain, we’re just like, what does that radar look like?
[0:21:55 – 0:22:02] Adam: We’re eventually just going to get the GPS thing where you have the weather on there and you can text message off of it, aren’t we?
[0:22:02 – 0:22:03] Adam: I would just want it for the radar.
[0:22:03 – 0:22:05] Erik: I want to see the radar, yeah.
[0:22:05 – 0:22:06] Adam: I don’t know.
[0:22:07 – 0:22:12] Adam: If they have the old-fashioned weather radio robot lady on there too, that’s great.
[0:22:12 – 0:22:16] Adam: That’s soothing, listening to the weather radio, even if you don’t have radar.
[0:22:16 – 0:22:18] Adam: But if you can have both, why not?
[0:22:18 – 0:22:19] Adam: Whatever it costs.
[0:22:20 – 0:22:23] Erik: I did miss the, having the weather radio on the frost river with you.
[0:22:23 – 0:22:24] Adam: For sure.
[0:22:24 – 0:22:24] Adam: Yeah.
[0:22:24 – 0:22:26] Adam: We didn’t even have the weather radio.
[0:22:26 – 0:22:32] Adam: I mean, we weren’t expecting much other than just like continuous Northwest wind and some sprinkles and that’s about what we got.
[0:22:32 – 0:22:33] Adam: So,
[0:22:33 – 0:22:39] Adam: But yeah, I mean, imagine being out there when a big storm like this is coming and not knowing it’s coming.
[0:22:39 – 0:22:42] Adam: I mean, the weather radio can only prepare you so much for something like that.
[0:22:42 – 0:22:50] Adam: I think there’s been a time where we’ve had the weather radio and they’re like, storm is approaching this town and this town currently and heading your direction.
[0:22:50 – 0:22:53] Adam: And so you could kind of visualize it based on the way they worded it.
[0:22:54 – 0:22:59] Adam: But yeah, that’s still a far stretch from actual having access to Doppler.
[0:22:59 – 0:23:07] Erik: And we’ve had the weather radio enough up in Quetico, I know, where it did definitely affect, you know, what we were, you know, trying to do.
[0:23:07 – 0:23:12] Erik: We can clearly hear something’s coming in two days, tomorrow.
[0:23:12 – 0:23:15] Erik: And then, you know, what are we going to try and do?
[0:23:15 – 0:23:17] Erik: And a couple of lakes that we decided to stop at.
[0:23:17 – 0:23:21] Adam: Make a move to get somewhere good for that event or, you know, do you hunker down?
[0:23:21 – 0:23:22] Erik: Yeah, exactly.
[0:23:22 – 0:23:25] Erik: So in that regard, but like, I don’t know, like how…
[0:23:27 – 0:23:34] Erik: useful like a weather radar or a weather radio would be in the situation regarding this storm.
[0:23:35 – 0:23:36] Erik: And we’ll talk about it because…
[0:23:36 – 0:23:44] Adam: I doubt they had… Maybe they had spot trackers at the time, but they probably didn’t have anything with like a radar service available or even…
[0:23:44 – 0:24:07] Erik: no but even like text messaging devices they probably just had like buttons you could press or yeah they’d send a beacon of your location to your loved ones via email through the satellite but i mean just in terms of what the what this weather system actually did it was like pretty poorly forecast so even if in the case of us when we were in quetica we wouldn’t have been like well tomorrow it sounds like it’s gonna be crazy
[0:24:07 – 0:24:08] Erik: Right, right.
[0:24:08 – 0:24:18] Erik: You know, it was up until the morning of the event, like 30% chance of rain was… 30% chance of thunderstorms was essentially the forecast the morning of.
[0:24:19 – 0:24:20] Erik: Quickly, that ratcheted up and it all changed.
[0:24:21 – 0:24:25] Erik: And if you would have cranked up your weather radio at the time, you probably would have heard, you know, the…
[0:24:26 – 0:24:31] Erik: The horrible beeping and buzzing of an actual thunderstorm warning being issued.
[0:24:31 – 0:24:35] Erik: But if you were to go to bed the night before, you would have been like, yeah, it’s a typical July day tomorrow.
[0:24:35 – 0:24:37] Erik: It’s going to be some afternoon thunderstorms.
[0:24:39 – 0:24:40] Adam: Who’s checking the weather radio in the morning?
[0:24:40 – 0:24:41] Adam: I don’t know.
[0:24:41 – 0:24:43] Erik: I guess I have.
[0:24:43 – 0:24:45] Erik: But if you’re not expecting it, you wouldn’t be like…
[0:24:46 – 0:24:51] Adam: With that storm last week, I was hearing about it, and I was at work.
[0:24:51 – 0:24:52] Adam: Seven inches of rain?
[0:24:53 – 0:25:01] Adam: Yeah, seven inches of rain, hail the size of a softball, and catastrophic winds possible hunker down.
[0:25:01 – 0:25:08] Adam: Can you imagine if you heard that forecast and you knew people were in the Boundary Waters and didn’t have a way to reach them?
[0:25:08 – 0:25:08] Adam: Yeah.
[0:25:09 – 0:25:09] Adam: I don’t know.
[0:25:09 – 0:25:15] Adam: When I moved up here, I was completely anti-cell phone and anti-communication devices.
[0:25:15 – 0:25:19] Adam: You’re out there, and you’re out there by your own with no communication for a reason.
[0:25:19 – 0:25:20] Adam: That’s part of the experience.
[0:25:21 – 0:25:29] Adam: The more experience I have in the park, and I haven’t even begun to hear the story of this book from you, but I’ve heard plenty of stories on the blowdown.
[0:25:30 – 0:25:45] Adam: Like to be in there, like when you’re at an event like that or what happened last week without, you know, any eyes or ears is, uh, when you have it available to you, you know, for a nominal fee of money, it seems kind of insane.
[0:25:45 – 0:25:47] Adam: You wouldn’t just take advantage of the technology at the time.
[0:25:47 – 0:26:11] Erik: yeah yeah totally i mean yeah i mean at least this last the storm you’re referring to it seemed like it was mostly rain i think there was a few trees here and there came down yeah i heard of some trees down i thought there was i did see a report on the sheriff’s page that like a family had a tree come down and possibly hit their tent in the gunflint trail side and that they were sending a crew but
[0:26:12 – 0:26:14] Adam: I never really heard any updates.
[0:26:14 – 0:26:17] Adam: I guess the only thing I heard was it wasn’t life-threatening.
[0:26:17 – 0:26:19] Adam: They just needed to evacuate them as soon as possible.
[0:26:20 – 0:26:22] Adam: It was still raining buckets that whole night.
[0:26:22 – 0:26:27] Adam: I assume they maybe got to them by boat the next day early in the morning.
[0:26:28 – 0:26:49] Adam: got him out of there but i never heard anything else on that so i assume that you know everybody was a at least somewhat okay yeah but that’s kind of scary i don’t know deke had a white pine come down and it like went right between his outhouse and his boat and like just threaded thread threaded the needle yeah no it’s that’s a pretty good size white pine so yeah
[0:26:51 – 0:26:51] Erik: Yeah.
[0:26:51 – 0:27:03] Adam: And then did you see the stuff on Ely where like multiple, like the Mudro, people came off their trip and like they had to close the Mudro permit and a bunch of other ones because like the road just completely washed out.
[0:27:03 – 0:27:03] Adam: Oh, yeah.
[0:27:03 – 0:27:04] Adam: Due to the amount of rain.
[0:27:04 – 0:27:04] Adam: Yeah.
[0:27:05 – 0:27:07] Adam: Like a bunch of people came off their trips and like just couldn’t leave.
[0:27:07 – 0:27:13] Adam: Imagine coming off a trip and all you want is a cold beer or sparkling water and a burger.
[0:27:14 – 0:27:37] Adam: and uh you basically just get out and you’re into like a bug infested parking lot and that’s as far as you can go and you’re just stuck there camping in the parking lot no communication again no way to like reach anybody or find out what’s going on and they’re just like sitting there until like a road crew comes through and says okay all good that might be days in this instance it sounded like to get some of those like roads fixed yeah even enough to just get people out maybe not to like permanently make them good
[0:27:38 – 0:27:41] Erik: Yeah, I mean, a bunch of trees over a road is one thing, but if the road isn’t there…
[0:27:42 – 0:27:49] Adam: I saw some pictures that were nuts with heavy equipment in there, just in the river trying to rebuild the roads frantically.
[0:27:50 – 0:27:54] Adam: That would be just awful to get off a long trip, and you’re like, finally, we’re done.
[0:27:54 – 0:28:01] Adam: I’m going to get a shower and a meal, and you’re just stuck in the parking lot with a bunch of other people coming off their trips.
[0:28:02 – 0:28:05] Adam: I mean, that might have been some sort of fun event, I guess, that you could look back on.
[0:28:06 – 0:28:34] Erik: remember the time we all got stranded at the mudro parking lot at the time i’m sure it would suck but you know you’re alive and they all camped through that storm too as they all got like rained on like crazy out in the park and then they had to come out to that which is wild yeah it’s part of the deal though yeah again uh this is uh not a replacement for reading the book highly recommend it we’ve read uh and book reported a number of carrie griffith’s uh books going all the way back to the uh
[0:28:34 – 0:28:36] Adam: The J stands for journalism.
[0:28:36 – 0:28:38] Erik: Journalism 101 from Cary.
[0:28:39 – 0:28:41] Adam: Do you think anybody has the middle name journalism?
[0:28:42 – 0:28:43] Adam: Cary does.
[0:28:44 – 0:28:49] Erik: No, probably not under birth certificate, but pseudonym, self-given middle name.
[0:28:50 – 0:29:00] Erik: And yeah, these are, unless otherwise noted, going to be notes gleaned from the book that I’ve regurgitated myself.
[0:29:00 – 0:29:02] Erik: There are some direct quotes from the book where
[0:29:02 – 0:29:13] Erik: especially the verbatim quotes from people that were involved in the cleanup operations, people that were camping when the storm rolled through.
[0:29:13 – 0:29:22] Erik: You know, those are things that I think just need to be read in their words, as close to their words as possible.
[0:29:22 – 0:29:23] Erik: So,
[0:29:24 – 0:29:49] Erik: um we’ll uh we’ll start we’ll see how far we get the the first ones of these book reports usually start with us uh talking like we have been for you know probably much longer than we really should and then kind of just getting into it and then uh the next couple ones are uh gonna be much more uh i don’t know hitting the the actual meat of the book report but you gotta set the table a little bit here at the mulch and think
[0:29:50 – 0:30:02] Erik: yeah, the mulching thing, we’ve set the table, uh, there, there’ll be, there’ll be, uh, plenty of meat coming our way this episode and, uh, in the, uh, the next, uh, probably two weeks, uh, going forward here.
[0:30:02 – 0:30:15] Erik: There’s, uh, a lot to get to, uh, this subject fascinates us, both the event itself and just, uh, crazy weather in general is always a fascination and, uh,
[0:30:15 – 0:30:20] Erik: There’s something really seriously wrong with you if you’re not interested in weather.
[0:30:20 – 0:30:20] Erik: I don’t know.
[0:30:20 – 0:30:28] Erik: There’s something about it that just keeps my day-to-day interesting, always following storms that are coming.
[0:30:28 – 0:30:32] Erik: Honestly, some of my least favorite times are really stable weather.
[0:30:33 – 0:30:35] Erik: I actually kind of really always be like, wow, what’s happening?
[0:30:35 – 0:30:39] Erik: They said it was supposed to rain this weekend, and then it just kind of doesn’t.
[0:30:40 – 0:30:41] Erik: And then you’re just like, oh, well.
[0:30:41 – 0:30:46] Adam: Or like a big storm’s coming at you, and then it just sort of fizzles out and evaporates before it reaches you.
[0:30:47 – 0:30:48] Erik: So, yeah, there’s something disappointing about that.
[0:30:49 – 0:30:51] Adam: I just wanted to hear the heavy rain and maybe a little thunder.
[0:30:52 – 0:30:53] Adam: Yeah.
[0:30:53 – 0:30:54] Adam: Yeah, that’s tough.
[0:30:54 – 0:30:55] Adam: Hell, we didn’t really have a tornado…
[0:30:57 – 0:31:04] Adam: We had a tornado watch during that storm last week, but there was never any real tornado warnings anywhere near us here in Cook County.
[0:31:04 – 0:31:07] Erik: There was a tornado warning just north of Ely, which is crazy.
[0:31:07 – 0:31:13] Adam: Yeah, Ely had one, and I saw one down by kind of north of Duluth at one point, just a little one.
[0:31:13 – 0:31:17] Adam: But there was definitely some tornado, I think, confirmed.
[0:31:17 – 0:31:19] Adam: Yeah, for sure.
[0:31:19 – 0:31:26] Adam: When I moved up here, just everybody was like, the blowdown had just happened right a couple years before my first summer up here in Cook County.
[0:31:26 – 0:31:28] Adam: Everybody famously talked about that.
[0:31:28 – 0:31:32] Adam: That was crazy, that blowdown, but we’ve never had a tornado in Cook County ever.
[0:31:32 – 0:31:36] Adam: And now we’ve had two confirmed tornadoes since I’ve moved up here.
[0:31:36 – 0:31:59] Adam: yeah one on clearwater since i’ve left actually the far east end tornado confirmed crazy one up on and they’re both right on right up on the border almost because the other one’s on otter track that kind of tracked it went across from the canadian side down across yep that one’s confirmed i believe and uh yeah wild to think that uh it’s just warming up enough now um
[0:32:00 – 0:32:02] Erik: You’re not safe anywhere anymore.
[0:32:02 – 0:32:04] Adam: You’re not safe from the twisters even up here.
[0:32:05 – 0:32:08] Adam: I don’t really ever feel too threatened by twisters up here.
[0:32:08 – 0:32:10] Adam: Did you see the video of the water spout twister?
[0:32:10 – 0:32:11] Adam: The one by Tofty?
[0:32:11 – 0:32:14] Adam: Yeah, Buddy Matt, his mother-in-law.
[0:32:14 – 0:32:17] Adam: I saw her in the co-op the day after that went viral.
[0:32:17 – 0:32:18] Adam: Oh, wow.
[0:32:18 – 0:32:24] Adam: I was like, hey, Connie, you getting royalties from Facebook every time that video gets played?
[0:32:24 – 0:32:25] Adam: She’s like, oh, I wish.
[0:32:25 – 0:32:26] Erik: Yeah, right.
[0:32:26 – 0:32:26] Erik: Yeah.
[0:32:27 – 0:32:31] Adam: Yeah, imagine going viral for a water spout over a Lake Superior video.
[0:32:31 – 0:32:33] Erik: Zuckerberg gets all those royalties.
[0:32:33 – 0:32:34] Adam: That’s my pennies.
[0:32:35 – 0:32:36] Adam: I keep the water spout pennies.
[0:32:37 – 0:32:39] Erik: I need to buy more of Hawaii.
[0:32:40 – 0:32:41] Erik: Is that what he’s doing?
[0:32:41 – 0:32:44] Erik: Well, he’s got a big chunk of one of the islands down there.
[0:32:46 – 0:32:46] Erik: All right.
[0:32:47 – 0:32:50] Erik: So from the outset, we get different accounts.
[0:32:50 – 0:32:51] Erik: There’s a lot of accounts.
[0:32:51 – 0:32:56] Erik: Try to keep this as clear, but it kind of jumps around a little bit.
[0:32:58 – 0:33:25] Erik: multiple parties preparing for their early July 1999 BWCA adventure, including U.S. Forest Service Ranger Nicole Selmer, who was putting in out of Ely with eight volunteers tasked with cleaning up portages as well as two personal groups that were putting in at Kawishawi Lake, heading in for Pauley and doing a seagull loop out to Alpine and back.
[0:33:26 – 0:33:34] Erik: The Polly and Seagull groups, those are going to be kind of the main, like, civilian stories going forward on the ground groups.
[0:33:36 – 0:33:36] Erik: Polly?
[0:33:37 – 0:33:37] Erik: Yeah.
[0:33:37 – 0:33:42] Erik: Polly is a group of five, and then there was three women that were doing…
[0:33:44 – 0:33:50] Erik: They put in on SAG, went in through Red Rock Bay, and were camped on Alpine on the morning of the 4th.
[0:33:51 – 0:34:04] Erik: By all accounts, none of the forecasts for these groups seemed to cause them any concern with seasonal temperatures and some forecast heat and precipitation, but nothing overtly noteworthy in terms of severe weather in the coming days.
[0:34:06 – 0:34:17] Erik: Back in 1999, the way that the permit system worked was different to how it works today, which I’m surprised it didn’t change a lot sooner, because I know that this was more of a recent change.
[0:34:17 – 0:34:26] Erik: But in 99, only trip leaders needed to be listed on individual overnight permits, which I guess up to that point hadn’t caused any issues.
[0:34:28 – 0:34:38] Erik: The day-to-day travel and camping itineraries of individual parties was then and is still now an impossible thing to track and manage and be a part of the permitting system.
[0:34:38 – 0:34:39] Erik: So, you know, you…
[0:34:41 – 0:34:46] Erik: Add that on to only literally having one name on a permit.
[0:34:46 – 0:34:50] Adam: I feel like now they’re newly asking, like, what day are you intending to leave?
[0:34:50 – 0:34:53] Erik: They do ask that, and everybody’s name needs to be on the permit.
[0:34:53 – 0:34:54] Adam: Right.
[0:34:54 – 0:34:54] Adam: That’s new.
[0:34:55 – 0:34:57] Adam: So they’re definitely collecting a little bit more.
[0:34:57 – 0:34:58] Adam: It’s hard to say.
[0:34:58 – 0:35:02] Adam: I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot of people that don’t have a for sure day we’re ending the trip.
[0:35:03 – 0:35:03] Erik: Yeah.
[0:35:03 – 0:35:05] Erik: I mean, at least try to get it close.
[0:35:05 – 0:35:11] Erik: I know for a while they were really trying to, they were really pounding the table for outfitters to collect license plates for everybody.
[0:35:11 – 0:35:12] Erik: I remember that.
[0:35:12 – 0:35:12] Erik: Yeah.
[0:35:12 – 0:35:18] Erik: Which was kind of a lot for over the course of a summer to every group license plate.
[0:35:19 – 0:35:20] Erik: So I don’t know.
[0:35:20 – 0:35:29] Erik: I hope that there isn’t a scenario where, you know, that didn’t need to be super useful to a group because that one I know I don’t even know if that’s still required or not.
[0:35:29 – 0:35:34] Erik: But everybody’s name does need to be on the permit now, which I feel like is kind of common sense.
[0:35:34 – 0:35:36] Erik: But in ninety nine, just the trip leader.
[0:35:36 – 0:35:37] Adam: It’s an invasion of my privacy.
[0:35:38 – 0:35:38] Adam: Yeah.
[0:35:38 – 0:35:40] Adam: I’m bringing seven individuals with me.
[0:35:41 – 0:35:42] Erik: Seven companions.
[0:35:43 – 0:35:44] Erik: I have seven friends.
[0:35:44 – 0:35:45] Erik: Yeah.
[0:35:45 – 0:35:48] Erik: There were completely opposite opinions.
[0:35:48 – 0:35:50] Erik: We’ve talked about this a lot in the past.
[0:35:50 – 0:35:52] Erik: It was interesting to see this noted in the book.
[0:35:53 – 0:36:00] Erik: Opposite opinions from within officials at the U.S. Forest Service on the level of overnight paddling activity over the Independence Day weekend.
[0:36:00 – 0:36:07] Erik: One district ranger claimed to expect an influx, while another actually gave some of the rangers the weekend off.
[0:36:07 – 0:36:10] Erik: Quote, July 4th is not a big day in the wilderness.
[0:36:10 – 0:36:16] Erik: It tends to be more of a family oriented time, not a high peak use day in the BWCA.
[0:36:17 – 0:36:18] Adam: I’ve always felt that way about it.
[0:36:18 – 0:36:20] Erik: That’s the way I’ve always leaned.
[0:36:20 – 0:36:25] Adam: Hence the Fourth of Brulai trips because we were always just like, whatever, get out there, easy peasy.
[0:36:25 – 0:36:35] Erik: And as my 10 years of being an outfitter, I feel like I have a bit of experience to kind of feel the same way too.
[0:36:35 – 0:36:37] Erik: But even within the Forest Service, it’s kind of like, well –
[0:36:38 – 0:36:43] Erik: People, I think really probably does still depend on what day of the week it falls.
[0:36:43 – 0:36:45] Erik: And in this case, it was on a weekend.
[0:36:45 – 0:36:51] Erik: So weekends, I think just in general, you’re always going to see an uptick in the number of people in the wilderness.
[0:36:53 – 0:36:59] Erik: Nicole Selmer believed that there were six other groups of volunteers just like hers in the field.
[0:36:59 – 0:37:11] Erik: as well as some other rangers on their own out checking permits to make sure that everyone had their two egg holders hung with care and that their microplastics were up to current emission standards.
[0:37:12 – 0:37:24] Erik: Steve Shug, wilderness program manager out of Toftee and Gunflint District, was quoted as saying, I remember our stats telling us there were about 10,000 visitors in the wilderness that weekend.
[0:37:24 – 0:37:26] Adam: Ooh, I’d like to get my hands on those stats.
[0:37:26 – 0:37:27] Erik: Yeah, right?
[0:37:27 – 0:37:33] Erik: Yeah, there’s some deep Forest Service stats that we general public… Public is not allowed to have those numbers.
[0:37:33 – 0:37:37] Erik: Public, not allowed.
[0:37:37 – 0:37:48] Erik: 10,000 bobbies and rexes notwithstanding, there was the plant and animal life of the park, with many of the trees in the park at the time having existed there for over 200 years, including the oldest in the state, which was on Seagull.
[0:37:49 – 0:37:50] Erik: Oh, it was.
[0:37:50 – 0:37:51] Erik: The old cedar on Seagull.
[0:37:52 – 0:37:52] Erik: Yeah.
[0:37:52 – 0:37:55] Erik: I believe Lee Freelick had determined that one.
[0:37:55 – 0:38:02] Erik: We talked about that during the Ham Lake burn, a tree being estimated at 2,000 years, an old cedar.
[0:38:02 – 0:38:03] Erik: That’s right.
[0:38:03 – 0:38:04] Erik: Insane.
[0:38:05 – 0:38:10] Erik: The current location of the National Weather Service office in Duluth was established in 1995.
[0:38:11 – 0:38:17] Erik: The nondescriptive building could be easy to miss if it wasn’t for the unique Doppler radar sphere nearby.
[0:38:17 – 0:38:24] Erik: Doppler radar is still one of the most sophisticated tools we have at measuring and tracking a storm’s attributes.
[0:38:25 – 0:38:30] Erik: Its breadth, its depth, its intensity, its velocity, its precipitation.
[0:38:31 – 0:38:57] Erik: little basics on some doppler radar here for you all right here we go is the main station just in duluth though like that was measuring this storm or was there another orb somewhere near no there so you know the like if you do the u.s or weather.gov and you do the full u.s mosaic yeah radar yeah like the one like our all of our radar comes from that duluth doppler
[0:38:58 – 0:39:00] Erik: The next closest one is in Minneapolis.
[0:39:00 – 0:39:07] Erik: And so that whole mosaic is all built up of individual radars at stations that are there’s some blank areas, too.
[0:39:07 – 0:39:10] Erik: I was surprised in Desert Southwest.
[0:39:10 – 0:39:11] Erik: There’s just the two radars.
[0:39:11 – 0:39:14] Erik: They only go out so far and there’s just a blank area.
[0:39:14 – 0:39:15] Adam: Who knows?
[0:39:15 – 0:39:16] Erik: No radar.
[0:39:16 – 0:39:16] Erik: Sure.
[0:39:16 – 0:39:18] Erik: There’s a military base there flying something.
[0:39:19 – 0:39:21] Erik: Did you know that radar is an acronym?
[0:39:21 – 0:39:23] Adam: I think I did know that.
[0:39:23 – 0:39:25] Erik: I always remember.
[0:39:25 – 0:39:26] Erik: And a nanogram.
[0:39:26 – 0:39:29] Erik: I think it is a radar.
[0:39:29 – 0:39:33] Erik: I can never remember what it is because it’s not like very.
[0:39:33 – 0:39:33] Adam: Reflective.
[0:39:33 – 0:39:36] Adam: Yeah, I’m not going to try and guess.
[0:39:36 – 0:39:39] Erik: Because it’s the first two letters from radio.
[0:39:39 – 0:39:41] Erik: So it’s radio detection and ranging.
[0:39:41 – 0:39:42] Adam: Oh, yeah.
[0:39:42 – 0:39:48] Erik: It had its original use with the military, but when they were looking for planes, they’d be like, what’s all this other crap on here?
[0:39:48 – 0:39:49] Adam: LiDAR is the same way.
[0:39:49 – 0:39:52] Adam: It’s like light detection and ranging.
[0:39:52 – 0:39:52] Adam: Exactly.
[0:39:53 – 0:39:56] Adam: I should have known based off of that because I was reading a lot about LiDAR this winter.
[0:39:56 – 0:39:58] Erik: LiDAR is crazy.
[0:39:58 – 0:39:59] Erik: It is crazy, down to the centimeter.
[0:40:00 – 0:40:01] Erik: It’s very fun to look at.
[0:40:01 – 0:40:02] Adam: I love it.
[0:40:02 – 0:40:27] Erik: um so essentially energy is pushed out from the radar and if there is nothing for that energy to reflect off of it just kind of continues on forever yes but if there is something in its way it is reflected back and it’s called an echo and it will appear as the colors that you see on your you know nightly news radar yes which the most common usage of radar is to show that reflection which is called a reflectivity map
[0:40:27 – 0:40:33] Erik: and it shows how much precipitation is being reflected back to individual Doppler towers.
[0:40:33 – 0:40:34] Erik: So it’s moisture, essentially?
[0:40:35 – 0:40:36] Erik: It’s just things in the way.
[0:40:36 – 0:40:40] Erik: You’ve seen and heard about those…
[0:40:40 – 0:40:42] Erik: Goose echoes.
[0:40:42 – 0:40:46] Erik: The bats that fly out of the caves down in Arkansas, those will crop up.
[0:40:46 – 0:40:48] Erik: Sometimes if bugs are really bad, you’ll get a bug cloud.
[0:40:48 – 0:40:50] Adam: Yeah, a cicada hatch.
[0:40:50 – 0:40:53] Erik: So anything, it doesn’t discriminate what it sees.
[0:40:53 – 0:40:54] Erik: What about goose?
[0:40:55 – 0:40:56] Erik: I think it would have to be a lot of goose.
[0:40:57 – 0:40:58] Erik: Lonesome goose?
[0:40:58 – 0:40:59] Adam: Lonesome goose is not enough.
[0:40:59 – 0:40:59] Adam: No.
[0:40:59 – 0:41:03] Adam: You need at least seven goose to have a goose return.
[0:41:03 – 0:41:07] Erik: A lot of lonesome goose.
[0:41:07 – 0:41:11] Erik: So the more of the radar beam that is reflected back, the darker the color.
[0:41:11 – 0:41:19] Erik: So more intense rainfall, which is why hail will appear almost like purple and white.
[0:41:20 – 0:41:22] Erik: Because it’s almost reflecting everything back.
[0:41:23 – 0:41:30] Erik: But red and really extreme colors like that doesn’t necessarily mean that the weather is severe.
[0:41:31 – 0:41:34] Erik: It just means that it’s very heavy precipitation.
[0:41:34 – 0:41:34] Erik: Yeah.
[0:41:35 – 0:41:40] Erik: And so the other thing that radar can provide is velocity, which is when you can start to be able to tell if it is severe.
[0:41:40 – 0:41:41] Adam: Are we talking about shears now?
[0:41:42 – 0:41:42] Erik: Yeah.
[0:41:43 – 0:41:47] Erik: So you can only provide velocity when there is precipitation, though.
[0:41:48 – 0:41:49] Erik: So Doppler obviously can’t.
[0:41:49 – 0:41:54] Adam: It’s like the velocity of the precipitation itself is what it’s measuring?
[0:41:54 – 0:41:55] Erik: Yeah, how it’s moving.
[0:41:55 – 0:41:57] Adam: So, yeah, the rain’s going this way.
[0:41:58 – 0:41:59] Adam: At this speed.
[0:42:00 – 0:42:03] Adam: But then right over here it’s going the other direction, and that’s called rotation.
[0:42:04 – 0:42:04] Erik: Exactly.
[0:42:04 – 0:42:11] Erik: So velocity radar uses just two colors, red and green, and they represent which way the precipitation is moving.
[0:42:11 – 0:42:20] Erik: Red indicates that the rain or whatever it’s measuring, it could be hail, it could be debris, is moving away from the radar.
[0:42:21 – 0:42:23] Erik: And green means that it’s moving towards it.
[0:42:23 – 0:42:26] Erik: And the brighter the greens and reds means the stronger the movement.
[0:42:26 – 0:42:27] Erik: Sure.
[0:42:27 – 0:42:40] Erik: So it can be very easy to detect cyclonic activity with velocity displays if you look for velocity couplets, which is tight-packed green and red, with red on the right and green on the left from the radar’s perspective.
[0:42:40 – 0:42:42] Erik: You can’t look at it from your perspective.
[0:42:42 – 0:42:47] Erik: You have to put yourself in the position of where the actual Doppler radar tower is.
[0:42:47 – 0:42:47] Adam: Mm-hmm.
[0:42:50 – 0:42:59] Erik: Most of the time, a bowing line segment or bow echo event will appear easy to see on both reflectivity and velocity displays.
[0:42:59 – 0:43:01] Erik: So you’ll see that big swooping rain.
[0:43:01 – 0:43:04] Erik: And then if you look at it on the velocity, you’ll see a lot of
[0:43:06 – 0:43:07] Adam: The wind will correspond to the rain.
[0:43:08 – 0:43:08] Erik: Yeah, totally.
[0:43:09 – 0:43:16] Erik: Though it doesn’t necessarily pertain to this event as much.
[0:43:18 – 0:43:21] Erik: The other product that radar can provide is correlation coefficient.
[0:43:22 – 0:43:32] Erik: which essentially means when, so when radar is reflecting off of typical rain or even small hail, it’s the same size.
[0:43:33 – 0:43:36] Erik: So it has a high correlation coefficient.
[0:43:36 – 0:43:38] Erik: So everything’s uniform, right?
[0:43:38 – 0:43:48] Erik: But the correlation coefficient will drop significantly during very large hail events or when you get trees, structures, and other debris up in the air.
[0:43:48 – 0:43:48] Erik: Oh.
[0:43:48 – 0:43:51] Erik: And so that radar starts bouncing off of crazy different objects.
[0:43:51 – 0:43:52] Erik: Yeah, okay.
[0:43:52 – 0:43:57] Erik: And so that color will drop way down and it’ll be almost always concentrated in like a debris ball.
[0:43:58 – 0:43:58] Erik: Ugh.
[0:43:58 – 0:44:07] Erik: And if you pair that with the velocity couplet, it’s very easy to like see a tornado on radar with these three main things that radar can show.
[0:44:07 – 0:44:08] Erik: Sure.
[0:44:08 – 0:44:18] Adam: So radar is like basically measuring from the top of like the treetops or does it go like just down to the ground through everything that’s not ground?
[0:44:18 – 0:44:19] Erik: Well, that’s the problem.
[0:44:19 – 0:44:21] Adam: So like where are we seeing the debris at?
[0:44:21 – 0:44:21] Erik: Yeah.
[0:44:21 – 0:44:28] Erik: So the farther out like something is away from the tower, it can only measure, you know, as high as it is, you know.
[0:44:28 – 0:44:42] Adam: yeah what if there’s like a big ridge in the way yeah and that’s where you do you get a blind spot of a different nature totally okay uh-huh and like how high up does it go then like is this a more like a big like
[0:44:43 – 0:45:12] Adam: half sphere over that emanates from the doppler dome itself or is it like really only like a thousand feet above the treetops like is more of a uh a round cake yeah i guess i’ve never thought about it and if it’s like if it’s measuring like if a storm’s like right on top of it you know i don’t think it’s it’s measuring very well i guess what’s the ceiling on it is my main question well it’s better at measuring things that are higher up than things that are really close
[0:45:13 – 0:45:19] Erik: So a lot of times it needs to be a like fairly substantial tornado that’s got debris up way up in the sky.
[0:45:19 – 0:45:29] Erik: It’s not going to measure like the, you know, the baggie blowing in the parking lot, you know, that’s mixing in that’s below the like.
[0:45:29 – 0:45:33] Erik: The tree line, anything usually below the trees is not being measured.
[0:45:33 – 0:45:39] Erik: And even stuff that’s even a little bit higher than that isn’t being measured entirely accurately.
[0:45:39 – 0:45:44] Erik: It’s usually stuff falling from the sky, I don’t know, way up in the air.
[0:45:45 – 0:45:49] Erik: But I don’t know, in terms of a dome effect, I’m not sure…
[0:45:50 – 0:46:12] Erik: what’s if like how much is going up or at an angle yeah would that be a waste of its like power to like be measuring a hundred thousand feet up straight above the doppler i i’m not sure if it’s just always on one setting direct the beam in a way yeah hey we got the storm coming in i think it’s just always doing the same thing yeah then i told you it was gonna be basics
[0:46:13 – 0:46:13] Adam: That makes sense.
[0:46:13 – 0:46:14] Adam: I don’t know.
[0:46:15 – 0:46:18] Adam: I got a lot of questions of this regard when it comes to Doppler.
[0:46:18 – 0:46:21] Erik: All I’ve done is provide more questions.
[0:46:21 – 0:46:24] Adam: That’s a good book report then.
[0:46:24 – 0:46:25] Erik: Yeah.
[0:46:25 – 0:46:33] Erik: In 1999, Mike Stewart was the meteorologist in charge at the Duluth station and remembers the heat as oppressive going into the July 4th weekend.
[0:46:34 – 0:46:40] Erik: There was a stationary front just north of Duluth running east to west, so we knew we were going to have some bad weather.
[0:46:41 – 0:46:45] Erik: The Duluth National Weather Service office is one of 122 in the U.S., and because weather is in the Midwest,
[0:46:49 – 0:47:04] Erik: Because weather in the Midwest, especially in the summertime, moves from west to east, looking at reports from stations in North Dakota can be useful and almost is needed on a day to day basis to try and predict what’s coming.
[0:47:06 – 0:47:17] Erik: Quote, during the evening of July 3rd, thunderstorms over southeast Montana and western South Dakota merged into a mesoscale convective system or an MCS.
[0:47:17 – 0:47:23] Erik: The system slowly weakened early in the morning of July 4th as it moved into eastern North Dakota.
[0:47:24 – 0:47:33] Erik: At 7 a.m. Central Daylight Time, the storm abruptly changed its character, intensifying into a squall line about 30 to 40 miles west of Fargo, North Dakota.
[0:47:33 – 0:47:40] Erik: Within 15 minutes, the storm struck Fargo, trees and power lines were brought down, many roofs were destroyed, and winds of 91 mph were recorded.
[0:47:43 – 0:47:44] Adam: Roofs were destroyed.
[0:47:44 – 0:47:45] Erik: Some roofs were destroyed.
[0:47:45 – 0:47:46] Adam: Out of nowhere.
[0:47:46 – 0:47:46] Erik: Yeah.
[0:47:46 – 0:47:47] Erik: Poor Fargo.
[0:47:47 – 0:47:48] Erik: Poor Fargo.
[0:47:49 – 0:47:57] Erik: On the night of July 3rd, Mike Stewart posted a forecast for northeastern Minnesota predicting a 20% chance of showers and thunderstorms for the rest of that evening.
[0:47:58 – 0:48:03] Erik: And for July 4th, a warm and humid holiday with a 30% chance of thunderstorms.
[0:48:04 – 0:48:10] Erik: Overnight, between the 3rd and the 4th, Mike was replaced by Dave Tomilak.
[0:48:10 – 0:48:16] Erik: And his 4.15 a.m. forecast was essentially the same as his predecessor.
[0:48:16 – 0:48:18] Erik: Tomlack.
[0:48:18 – 0:48:27] Erik: Even his 7.39 report repeated the same verbiage, warm, humid, partly sunny, 30% chance of T-storms.
[0:48:28 – 0:48:34] Adam: So it’s just one person in the nondescript building in Duluth generating the reports?
[0:48:34 – 0:48:35] Erik: I would say, yeah, I would say generally.
[0:48:35 – 0:48:35] Erik: Generally.
[0:48:36 – 0:48:42] Adam: based on sort of their own observations and then observations from other stations westward.
[0:48:42 – 0:48:45] Erik: Yeah, there’s a little bit more talk that I didn’t take.
[0:48:46 – 0:48:49] Adam: I guess I thought they were always wrong, but I figured it was like a committee at least.
[0:48:50 – 0:48:52] Erik: Well, in terms of day-to-day, yes.
[0:48:53 – 0:48:58] Erik: It sounds like there’s maybe one to three people in there doing forecasts and issuing forecasts.
[0:48:58 – 0:49:01] Erik: But there’s also a storm center in Norman, Oklahoma.
[0:49:02 – 0:49:02] Erik: Oh, yeah.
[0:49:02 – 0:49:03] Adam: I’ve seen it in Twister.
[0:49:04 – 0:49:04] Adam: Oh, yeah.
[0:49:04 – 0:49:05] Adam: Yeah.
[0:49:05 – 0:49:06] Adam: I love those scenes.
[0:49:06 – 0:49:08] Adam: And they’re like, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet.
[0:49:08 – 0:49:10] Adam: Like the thing, ticker tape is coming off.
[0:49:10 – 0:49:12] Adam: Like, get the heck out of that outdoor movie theater.
[0:49:13 – 0:49:16] Erik: Yeah, they got it right in the epicenter of Tornado Alley.
[0:49:16 – 0:49:17] Erik: It’s a great place for a building like that.
[0:49:17 – 0:49:19] Adam: It’s like the CDC of tornadoes.
[0:49:19 – 0:49:21] Erik: Yep.
[0:49:21 – 0:49:28] Erik: We’ve got a direct quote here from the book, kind of finishing up the morning of the 4th, the National Weather Service and what they had going on.
[0:49:29 – 0:49:34] Erik: By 8 a.m. or soon thereafter, Dave must have been hearing news from his colleagues in Grand Forks.
[0:49:34 – 0:49:46] Erik: By that time, according to the National Weather Service report, the storm had already abruptly changed, blowing through Fargo at about the same time he released his 739 report and causing significant damage.
[0:49:47 – 0:49:53] Erik: As the storm moved east-northeast, blowing into western and central northern Minnesota, it intensified.
[0:49:54 – 0:50:10] Erik: Reporting and forecasting weather in this region was the responsibility of the Grand Forks National Weather Service, and at 8.45 a.m., that office finally issued a severe thunderstorm watch for the Bemidji area and surrounding communities that would remain in effect until 1 p.m.,
[0:50:11 – 0:50:18] Erik: The 845 report predicted scattered thunderstorms, some severe with large hail and damaging winds.
[0:50:18 – 0:50:19] Erik: Damaging winds.
[0:50:20 – 0:50:21] Erik: Destroyed roofs.
[0:50:22 – 0:50:32] Erik: In fact, as Mike Stewart had feared, as the storm moved into Minnesota, it was building into something much more significant than the squall line that had moved across North Dakota five hours earlier.
[0:50:33 – 0:50:34] Erik: According to the historical report,
[0:50:35 – 0:50:41] Erik: The bow echo seemed to divide its energy just after 8 a.m. in extreme western Minnesota near Detroit Lakes.
[0:50:42 – 0:50:56] Erik: A bow echo, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains on its website, is a radar signature of a squall line that bows out as winds fall behind the line and circulations develop on either end.
[0:50:56 – 0:51:00] Erik: Brief tornadoes occur on the leading edge of a bow echo.
[0:51:01 – 0:51:13] Erik: By late morning, the Duluth National Weather Service was both tracking the reports issued by Grand Forks and using its own Doppler radar and other tools to glimpse some alarming atmospheric developments.
[0:51:14 – 0:51:23] Erik: By 10.55am, the Duluth office issued a severe thunderstorm watch that would be in effect until 3pm for Ely and the surrounding area.
[0:51:23 – 0:51:29] Erik: It also predicted scattered thunderstorms and warned that a few storms could produce hail and damaging winds.
[0:51:30 – 0:51:51] Erik: issuing a severe thunderstorm warning is a good news bad news situation explained mike the good news people in front of the storm are getting as much time as possible to prepare the bad news is that if you can issue a warning that far in advance the weather is usually very bad oh yeah this is an obvious situation where we have to issue the warning yeah
[0:51:52 – 0:51:59] Erik: So the day at that point at the Duluth office became quite busy with their staff doubling from three to about six.
[0:51:59 – 0:52:00] Adam: They’re calling in some extra interns.
[0:52:01 – 0:52:04] Erik: Well, Mike Stewart was supposed to have the weekend off and he had to get called back in.
[0:52:04 – 0:52:10] Erik: So the main guy didn’t get to do his, didn’t have his 4th of July festivities.
[0:52:10 – 0:52:10] Erik: He’s back in the office.
[0:52:10 – 0:52:11] Erik: It’s a family time.
[0:52:11 – 0:52:12] Erik: It’s a day for family.
[0:52:14 – 0:52:23] Erik: The Ely Holiday Parade was postponed because of the locals and their access to television and radio.
[0:52:24 – 0:52:28] Erik: The warnings were all out, but quite the opposite for any campers in the Bougie Waters.
[0:52:28 – 0:52:28] Erik: Yeah.
[0:52:29 – 0:52:42] Erik: As the storm moved across the state, it caused intermittent damage, behaved erratically, not demonstrating that it would soon emerge as a once in a 500-year meteorological event rarely seen at its latitude.
[0:52:43 – 0:52:44] Adam: A 1 in 500?
[0:52:44 – 0:52:44] Adam: Yeah.
[0:52:45 – 0:52:45] Erik: Wow.
[0:52:46 – 0:52:48] Adam: Yeah, you hear about, like, 100-year storms.
[0:52:48 – 0:52:53] Adam: I don’t know that I’ve ever actually heard that put in a 500-year storm kind of parameter.
[0:52:53 – 0:52:56] Erik: Well, I feel like I heard the 1 in 100 got tossed around with this last rain event.
[0:52:57 – 0:52:59] Adam: Well, yeah, that’s now the new thing.
[0:52:59 – 0:53:06] Adam: It’s like, oh, we have a 100-year storm every three years now, at least, if not more often.
[0:53:06 – 0:53:06] Adam: Yeah.
[0:53:07 – 0:53:11] Adam: Which, again, you know, erratic weather will become more common.
[0:53:11 – 0:53:12] Adam: Yeah.
[0:53:12 – 0:53:12] Erik: Yeah.
[0:53:12 – 0:53:25] Erik: Well, there’s like I mean, you just like see it’s it’s either a meme or it’s either an Onion article where it’s like every like any city USA either has too much water or not enough.
[0:53:26 – 0:53:30] Erik: Like nobody’s there’s no happy medium that you either flooded or you’re in a drought.
[0:53:30 – 0:53:31] Erik: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:53:32 – 0:53:36] Erik: And it can change like Minnesota last year, this time, just full blown drought.
[0:53:36 – 0:53:46] Erik: Obviously it’s been a year, but I mean, that feel like the storm we had last week would have wiped out or done some serious damage to even like a full blown drought.
[0:53:46 – 0:53:47] Erik: And we weren’t in one when we got it.
[0:53:47 – 0:53:53] Adam: So, I mean, it’s, yeah, I thought that I thought everything in the yard was going to be washed away in the morning.
[0:53:53 – 0:53:54] Adam: It was raining so hard.
[0:53:54 – 0:53:54] Adam: Yeah.
[0:53:54 – 0:53:57] Adam: We didn’t even have like hardly anything compared to other places.
[0:53:57 – 0:53:57] Erik: Right.
[0:53:58 – 0:54:02] Erik: I mean, compared to, yeah, the seven tower, Minnesota got seven inches.
[0:54:02 – 0:54:02] Erik: Right.
[0:54:02 – 0:54:03] Erik: That’s insane.
[0:54:03 – 0:54:07] Erik: Maybe three, four over here, which is a lot in still a lot at once.
[0:54:07 – 0:54:07] Erik: Yeah.
[0:54:07 – 0:54:07] Adam: You know,
[0:54:09 – 0:54:15] Adam: Yeah, I mean, the yard is, that was a week ago almost now, and the yard is, like, spongy still and, like, swampy everywhere.
[0:54:16 – 0:54:16] Erik: Oh, yeah.
[0:54:16 – 0:54:19] Erik: There’s places up on Pincushion that I’ve been walking for the last month.
[0:54:19 – 0:54:19] Erik: Yeah.
[0:54:20 – 0:54:29] Erik: And I went up to walk the dogs the morning after that storm, and I was wearing my ankle-high extra tufts.
[0:54:29 – 0:54:30] Erik: That’s not enough.
[0:54:30 – 0:54:31] Erik: And it was over the boot.
[0:54:31 – 0:54:55] Adam: puddles yeah around them i had the same thing in the yard i was wearing the same boots i was like this isn’t enough boot for the solstice yeah i’ve never seen i’ve never seen our property this wet at the solstice ever no this is by far got to be a record for rain in june right now i think for sure i was listening to uh paul hutner he was uh yeah my uh so hutner’s still doing things
[0:54:56 – 0:54:58] Erik: He does the updraft blog.
[0:54:58 – 0:54:59] Erik: He doesn’t write as regularly on it.
[0:55:00 – 0:55:04] Erik: Can’t not recommend enough the NPR updraft blog for our listeners.
[0:55:05 – 0:55:06] Adam: Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
[0:55:06 – 0:55:06] Erik: Hutner.
[0:55:07 – 0:55:08] Erik: I’m hot on Hutner.
[0:55:08 – 0:55:10] Adam: We’re all hot for Hutner on Tumble Home.
[0:55:10 – 0:55:11] Adam: Yeah, we are.
[0:55:11 – 0:55:18] Erik: But he was talking about how it’s the same amount of rain that, I mean, June is the rainiest month in Minnesota.
[0:55:19 – 0:55:23] Erik: But for most locations, it was close to two months worth of rain in a night.
[0:55:23 – 0:55:23] Erik: Yeah.
[0:55:24 – 0:55:27] Erik: So on top of where we’ve already been like ahead of.
[0:55:27 – 0:55:29] Adam: And it’s been raining like crazy the whole month already.
[0:55:29 – 0:55:30] Adam: Yeah.
[0:55:30 – 0:55:36] Erik: Which I guess we’re making up for the winter, you know, better than, I’d rather have this than the woods on fire, you know.
[0:55:36 – 0:55:36] Adam: Absolutely.
[0:55:36 – 0:55:36] Adam: So.
[0:55:36 – 0:55:37] Adam: Keep raining.
[0:55:37 – 0:55:37] Adam: Keep raining.
[0:55:38 – 0:55:41] Erik: So there was a southern branch of the Bow Echo that did cause some damage.
[0:55:42 – 0:55:55] Erik: Some tornadoes cropped up in central Minnesota, but the radar was revealing a trajectory of an impossibly intense storm headed east-northeast towards Ely and the Arrowhead of Minnesota.
[0:55:56 – 0:55:57] Erik: Another quote here.
[0:55:58 – 0:56:01] Erik: What no one could foretell was how truly bad the weather would become.
[0:56:02 – 0:56:13] Erik: While a storm of the intensity that blew through the BWCA that afternoon of July 4th may have happened before, it had never happened as far north as the Bungie Waters in southern Canada.
[0:56:14 – 0:56:23] Erik: The intensity of the derecho was not only monumental, it was unparalleled in the annals of known meteorological history.
[0:56:24 – 0:56:29] Erik: Perhaps most astounding was its length, breadth, and duration.
[0:56:30 – 0:56:35] Erik: As a singular weather event, it would continue heading north, east, like a juggernaut.
[0:56:36 – 0:56:39] Erik: Parts of the country as far away as Maine would be blown apart.
[0:56:40 – 0:56:48] Erik: Trees would fall, power lines would be snapped like overstretched rubber bands, roofs would fly heavenward, and people would die.
[0:56:49 – 0:56:59] Erik: When it finally reached the Atlantic, it would start heading south, causing more destruction before it returned to land along the mid-Atlantic seaboard.
[0:56:59 – 0:57:03] Erik: It then traveled west and eventually blew itself out in Missouri.
[0:57:04 – 0:57:04] Erik: What?
[0:57:05 – 0:57:05] Adam: Crazy.
[0:57:05 – 0:57:06] Adam: It did a full lap?
[0:57:06 – 0:57:09] Erik: It did all the way out to the ocean and then came back around.
[0:57:10 – 0:57:12] Adam: I heard that it ended in Maine at some point.
[0:57:12 – 0:57:16] Adam: I was like, geez, it went all the way out to Acadia, huh?
[0:57:16 – 0:57:19] Adam: I didn’t know it blew all the way back around to Missouri?
[0:57:19 – 0:57:19] Erik: Apparently.
[0:57:19 – 0:57:20] Erik: I don’t know.
[0:57:20 – 0:57:20] Erik: I have no idea.
[0:57:20 – 0:57:21] Erik: That’s like west of here.
[0:57:21 – 0:57:22] Erik: How that works.
[0:57:22 – 0:57:24] Adam: Well, it’s definitely even with us.
[0:57:24 – 0:57:25] Erik: Yeah.
[0:57:26 – 0:57:42] Erik: So while the damage farther east would be bad, nothing else in the derecho’s 6,000-mile path would rival the most intense and comprehensive destruction that was at midday on July 4th bearing down on the remote Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness.
[0:57:42 – 0:57:57] Erik: Perhaps most consequential of all, no one who had chosen this holiday weekend to enjoy one of Minnesota’s most wild natural areas had any idea of whether catastrophe of truly historic proportions was about to befall them.
[0:57:58 – 0:57:59] Erik: Befall them.
[0:58:00 – 0:58:02] Erik: Yikes.
[0:58:03 – 0:58:04] Erik: You could just end it there.
[0:58:04 – 0:58:05] Erik: That’s intense.
[0:58:05 – 0:58:07] Erik: Yeah.
[0:58:07 – 0:58:19] Erik: So on the morning of July 4th, 1999, again, U.S. Forest Service Ranger Nicole Selmer and her crew of cleanup volunteers were camped on the southern end of Four Town Lake, just a portage in from Mudro.
[0:58:19 – 0:58:25] Erik: It would have been us this spring had we gotten one of those permits.
[0:58:26 – 0:58:32] Erik: After usual radio contact with the district, she learned about some possible severe thunderstorms forecast for later that afternoon.
[0:58:32 – 0:58:33] Erik: They got radios.
[0:58:33 – 0:58:34] Erik: They got radios.
[0:58:34 – 0:58:35] Adam: We got Doppler.
[0:58:35 – 0:58:36] Adam: We got pocket Doppler.
[0:58:36 – 0:58:37] Adam: They’re working.
[0:58:37 – 0:58:37] Adam: They got radios.
[0:58:37 – 0:58:39] Adam: Selmer’s got the Doppler.
[0:58:39 – 0:58:40] Erik: Yeah, back then.
[0:58:40 – 0:58:43] Adam: You had to hand crank it, but it worked.
[0:58:43 – 0:58:45] Adam: It worked.
[0:58:45 – 0:58:46] Adam: Old reliable, they used to call it.
[0:58:46 – 0:58:53] Erik: So her and her volunteers proceeded to prepare rehabbing the portages between Mudro and Four Town Lakes.
[0:58:54 – 0:58:59] Erik: While working on the Billy Goat portage, I believe we would have gotten to experience that.
[0:58:59 – 0:59:01] Erik: I believe we would have, yeah.
[0:59:01 – 0:59:05] Erik: But still a portage we have not gotten to experience.
[0:59:05 – 0:59:10] Erik: But I think for obvious reasons, it sounds like not a very fun portage.
[0:59:12 – 0:59:12] Erik: Yeah.
[0:59:12 – 0:59:27] Erik: So, yeah, they were doing your basic Forest Service rehab, you know, mitigating erosion, getting building boardwalks, getting boardwalks in, maybe clearing a tree or two, but mostly making sure that, you know, it wasn’t just going to get washed away the next time it rained.
[0:59:29 – 0:59:34] Erik: But around noon, Nicole looked to the west and noticed the western skies had turned an ugly green.
[0:59:34 – 0:59:35] Erik: Oh, no, not green.
[0:59:35 – 0:59:36] Erik: Not green.
[0:59:36 – 0:59:40] Erik: There’s a lot of good color descriptions going forward.
[0:59:40 – 0:59:47] Erik: The clear oncoming of weather sent the group into protocol, stowing gear and securing everything they could, including canoes.
[0:59:49 – 0:59:56] Erik: We didn’t think it was anything other than just a thunderstorm we had to sit through, Nicole said.
[0:59:56 – 0:59:57] Erik: Yeah, they’re going to be waylaid.
[0:59:57 – 0:59:59] Erik: Yeah, we were off the portage, but right next to it.
[1:00:00 – 1:00:01] Erik: It was a nice low spot.
[1:00:02 – 1:00:05] Erik: There weren’t any large trees around us because they were all above us on top of the hill.
[1:00:06 – 1:00:09] Erik: And that seemed like the safest place to be out of the lightning and wind.
[1:00:10 – 1:00:14] Erik: We didn’t have time to put up a tarp, so like any other storm, we hunkered down and waited.
[1:00:15 – 1:00:19] Erik: But when the weather hit, it was clear this was not your normal thunderstorm.
[1:00:20 – 1:00:28] Erik: While the winds were less intense than in the wilderness to the south, Nicole said, the trees around us began moving in circles.
[1:00:28 – 1:00:31] Erik: I remember looking up and seeing the trees spinning.
[1:00:31 – 1:00:34] Erik: The aspen had a lot of heavy branches on all sides.
[1:00:35 – 1:00:39] Erik: They were being pushed in one direction, then they’d snap back and be pushed in the other direction.
[1:00:40 – 1:00:42] Erik: So they’d spin back around.
[1:00:43 – 1:00:48] Erik: It looked like we were, it looked like they were literally going in circles while the rain poured down on top of us.
[1:00:49 – 1:00:52] Erik: All of us were thinking, oh my God, we have never seen a storm like this.
[1:00:53 – 1:00:55] Erik: The skies were green and intense.
[1:00:55 – 1:00:59] Erik: We were just caught in the moment experiencing the power of nature.
[1:01:01 – 1:01:02] Adam: No tarpa.
[1:01:02 – 1:01:04] Erik: They didn’t have time to get a tarp up, I guess.
[1:01:05 – 1:01:07] Adam: Then flip a canoe up into a tree.
[1:01:08 – 1:01:09] Erik: No, that’s the go-to move.
[1:01:09 – 1:01:11] Erik: I mean, if you can hang on to it.
[1:01:11 – 1:01:11] Erik: Yeah.
[1:01:12 – 1:01:13] Erik: Yeah.
[1:01:13 – 1:01:17] Erik: So the Koishui Ranger District Office is located on the edge of Ely.
[1:01:18 – 1:01:21] Erik: And on the morning of the 4th, Wilderness Ranger Pete Weckman.
[1:01:21 – 1:01:22] Erik: Weckman.
[1:01:22 – 1:01:22] Erik: Weckman.
[1:01:23 – 1:01:23] Adam: Weckman.
[1:01:24 – 1:01:24] Adam: Weckman.
[1:01:25 – 1:01:26] Erik: We’re saying that properly?
[1:01:26 – 1:01:28] Erik: Yeah, I think you’re getting it right.
[1:01:28 – 1:01:29] Erik: Got it right?
[1:01:29 – 1:01:29] Erik: Yeah.
[1:01:29 – 1:01:30] Erik: All right.
[1:01:30 – 1:01:33] Erik: As a part of his morning tasks, he was…
[1:01:34 – 1:01:51] Erik: supposed to relay any relevant information to his crew in the field on this morning in particular he noted the obvious weather concern quote i’m from southern minnesota in ely that morning it was like 85 to 90 degrees and humid as hell
[1:01:51 – 1:01:55] Erik: I remember cornfield country man Kato.
[1:01:55 – 1:02:00] Erik: And when you had days like this, it either spawned a tornado or something else bad.
[1:02:00 – 1:02:02] Erik: It was just in the back of my mind.
[1:02:02 – 1:02:04] Erik: I knew something was going to happen.
[1:02:04 – 1:02:06] Erik: And he shared these concerns with his crew.
[1:02:08 – 1:02:14] Erik: Pete patrolled Moose Lake all the way up to Prairie Portage and into Basswood, checking fishing licenses and permits.
[1:02:15 – 1:02:24] Erik: This morning, he invited Dwayne Whalen to assist as his bowman for some reprieve from time that he was supposed to spend in the woods.
[1:02:26 – 1:02:43] Erik: They took off up Moose Lake at around 10.30 a.m. in their 25-horsepower motor, reached Prairie Portage, jumped in a similar boat, and moved into Basswood out of Inlet Bay and eventually Bailey Bay before getting a view back to the horizon facing the southwest.
[1:02:44 – 1:02:50] Erik: And from there, they could see, quote, “…quite a ways down to the Washington Island area.
[1:02:51 – 1:02:54] Erik: It was just that dark blackish color.”
[1:02:55 – 1:03:20] Erik: ah oh no yeah realizing their vulnerability of their position pete decided they needed to get back to the dock on moose and retrace their steps through prairie portage got into the boat they had come up on and as they moved down moose they encountered a couple of different groups and canoes that they implored get to get to land and take cover as the black wall continued to approach
[1:03:21 – 1:03:26] Erik: They reached the dock as it started to rain and ran up to their truck just as the storm hit.
[1:03:28 – 1:03:29] Erik: A quote from Pete.
[1:03:29 – 1:03:32] Erik: I kid you not, the truck started swaying from side to side.
[1:03:32 – 1:03:36] Erik: It was like a tidal wave of low-level clouds coming right at us.
[1:03:37 – 1:03:38] Erik: I’ve never seen anything like it.
[1:03:40 – 1:03:43] Erik: Pete and Duane watched the storm intensify all around them.
[1:03:43 – 1:03:47] Erik: A blue heron got blown sideways from its intended flight path.
[1:03:47 – 1:03:49] Erik: It had no control whatsoever.
[1:03:50 – 1:03:53] Erik: Then a pack of mallards got slapped out of the sky like badminton birdies.
[1:03:54 – 1:03:54] Erik: Wet bird.
[1:03:55 – 1:03:57] Erik: Wet bird getting slapped around.
[1:03:58 – 1:03:59] Erik: Shuttlecracks.
[1:03:59 – 1:03:59] Erik: Oh, God.
[1:04:00 – 1:04:04] Erik: Could you imagine just seeing birds getting ripped out of the sky like that?
[1:04:04 – 1:04:06] Adam: They had no control whatsoever.
[1:04:06 – 1:04:07] Erik: Get down.
[1:04:08 – 1:04:10] Adam: They should have landed like the lonesome goose.
[1:04:11 – 1:04:11] Adam: Get down.
[1:04:11 – 1:04:12] Erik: Get on the water.
[1:04:13 – 1:04:16] Erik: The tops of balsams snapped off and blew away.
[1:04:17 – 1:04:20] Erik: Next, power lines did the same, bringing live wires down with them.
[1:04:21 – 1:04:25] Erik: As the storm passed, it calmed enough for them to exit the truck and survey the scene.
[1:04:25 – 1:04:27] Erik: He was sure people had died.
[1:04:28 – 1:04:38] Erik: The first thing I did was walk down the driveway to see if we could get out of there, but everything was blocked by a fallen forest.
[1:04:39 – 1:04:45] Erik: And then all of a sudden there was this young gentleman walking down the road from the opposite direction from Canadian Border Outfitters.
[1:04:46 – 1:04:51] Erik: He was checking to see if they could drive down the Forest Service driveway to get out of their resort.
[1:04:52 – 1:04:56] Erik: Seems like a wild decision to be making like seconds after a storm.
[1:04:56 – 1:04:56] Erik: We gotta go.
[1:04:57 – 1:04:58] Erik: Gotta find the route out.
[1:04:58 – 1:04:59] Erik: We gotta get out.
[1:05:00 – 1:05:04] Erik: But he too quickly realized they would not be returning to civilization anytime soon.
[1:05:06 – 1:05:09] Erik: Tidal wave clouds?
[1:05:09 – 1:05:10] Erik: Yeah, I mean… At ground level?
[1:05:32 – 1:05:33] Erik: Yeah, wave clouds.
[1:05:34 – 1:05:35] Erik: Right above the trees, he said.
[1:05:37 – 1:05:40] Erik: At that point, Pete used the truck radio to call Forest Service dispatch.
[1:05:41 – 1:05:43] Erik: Dispatch, this is Officer Weckman.
[1:05:43 – 1:05:44] Erik: I’m up on Moose Lake.
[1:05:45 – 1:05:46] Erik: We just had a severe windstorm.
[1:05:47 – 1:05:48] Erik: We’ve got power lines down.
[1:05:49 – 1:05:49] Erik: I can’t get out of here.
[1:05:50 – 1:05:52] Erik: We need to get some crews with power saws up here.
[1:05:53 – 1:06:00] Erik: He also suggested they get the Forest Service beaver planes in the air to survey the damage farther east where the storm was heading.
[1:06:01 – 1:06:12] Erik: And it would probably make sense, given what they’d just experienced, to get an incident management team called up to begin to address what he was certain would be some serious search and rescue efforts.
[1:06:14 – 1:06:20] Erik: He would recommend they contact the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, which would take the lead in search and rescue.
[1:06:20 – 1:06:24] Erik: Pete suspected they would be busy for the foreseeable future.
[1:06:25 – 1:06:32] Erik: But at this point, he had no idea that foreseeable future would stretch into days, weeks, months, and eventually years.
[1:06:36 – 1:06:36] Erik: You can pause there.
[1:06:37 – 1:06:39] Erik: It’s a good place to stop.
[1:06:39 – 1:06:40] Erik: Yeah.
[1:06:40 – 1:06:42] Erik: We’ll start next week with Ralph Bondi.
[1:06:43 – 1:06:44] Erik: Ralph.
[1:06:44 – 1:06:46] Erik: One of the Ely area honor guards.
[1:06:46 – 1:06:48] Erik: What the hell is an honor guard?
[1:06:49 – 1:06:50] Adam: He was supposed to be in the parade.
[1:06:50 – 1:06:55] Erik: Basically, they hold the fake guns and the flags.
[1:06:56 – 1:06:57] Erik: He’s got a funny story.
[1:06:58 – 1:06:59] Erik: All right, Ralph.
[1:06:59 – 1:06:59] Erik: Mm-hmm.
[1:07:01 – 1:07:01] Erik: Yeah.
[1:07:02 – 1:07:03] Erik: Crazy colors.
[1:07:03 – 1:07:05] Erik: There is a part of me that… Blacky… What was it?
[1:07:06 – 1:07:07] Erik: What?
[1:07:07 – 1:07:08] Erik: Blacky darkness.
[1:07:09 – 1:07:10] Erik: Oh, black.
[1:07:10 – 1:07:11] Erik: No, I don’t think he’d say anything.
[1:07:11 – 1:07:12] Erik: Just black.
[1:07:13 – 1:07:14] Erik: Just black.
[1:07:14 – 1:07:15] Erik: The black sky.
[1:07:15 – 1:07:16] Erik: I don’t know what blacky darkness.
[1:07:16 – 1:07:18] Erik: I don’t remember blacky darkness.
[1:07:18 – 1:07:20] Adam: There’s a blacky darkness in there.
[1:07:21 – 1:07:23] Adam: Something purple.
[1:07:23 – 1:07:24] Adam: Blackish color.
[1:07:24 – 1:07:24] Adam: Black.
[1:07:24 – 1:07:26] Erik: It was just that dark blackish color.
[1:07:26 – 1:07:28] Adam: Dark blackish color.
[1:07:28 – 1:07:28] Adam: Yikes.
[1:07:29 – 1:07:30] Erik: Is that the title of the episode?
[1:07:30 – 1:07:31] Adam: It’s pretty good.
[1:07:31 – 1:07:35] Adam: Yeah, it’s pretty awful and very ominous and foreboding.
[1:07:36 – 1:07:36] Erik: Yeah.
[1:07:36 – 1:07:37] Erik: For middle of the day.
[1:07:38 – 1:07:58] Adam: yeah noon essentially that’s the worst part I came through at noon like one of the longest days of the year I mean dark blackish dark blackish probably better than rolling through in the middle of the night but man I don’t know I don’t know if there’s ever at least you would be unaware like something really bad happened I don’t think there’s really a good scenario yeah
[1:07:58 – 1:07:59] Erik: for a storm like that to come through.
[1:07:59 – 1:08:04] Adam: It doesn’t sound like most people were able to hunker down because it got on so fast.
[1:08:04 – 1:08:09] Adam: I’m shocked these guys made it all the way back from Basswood back to their truck just in the nick of time.
[1:08:09 – 1:08:10] Erik: Yeah.
[1:08:10 – 1:08:11] Adam: That’s kind of a big loop.
[1:08:11 – 1:08:12] Adam: You had to drive back into it.
[1:08:12 – 1:08:20] Erik: Yeah, they just got up enough to see the basically, you can see how far up they had to get out of the last little bay that gets into Prairie Portage.
[1:08:20 – 1:08:21] Erik: Yeah.
[1:08:21 – 1:08:22] Erik: I mean, they had 25 horsepower motors.
[1:08:22 – 1:08:27] Erik: They were moving pretty good, but still, it’s a long, long way up and down.
[1:08:28 – 1:08:30] Erik: So, yeah, I mean, they got out on the water at 1030.
[1:08:31 – 1:08:36] Erik: They probably got up there at like 1130 and back to the landing at 1230.
[1:08:36 – 1:08:38] Adam: Crazy they made it back in time, though.
[1:08:39 – 1:08:42] Adam: Stopping to warn paddlers on the way, like, get to shore, hunker down.
[1:08:42 – 1:08:44] Erik: Basically, they were telling people, they were like, I think we can make it.
[1:08:44 – 1:08:46] Erik: They were like, no, go to that island right now.
[1:08:46 – 1:08:47] Adam: Go.
[1:08:47 – 1:08:47] Erik: Yeah.
[1:08:47 – 1:08:49] Adam: We’re heading for safety ourselves.
[1:08:49 – 1:08:51] Adam: Well, yeah, and it’s like- I didn’t stay with the paddlers.
[1:08:52 – 1:09:01] Erik: Well, there was part of me that was like, well, what options did they have besides just try to tell people, like, we just saw some really nasty weather coming.
[1:09:01 – 1:09:02] Erik: You need to- Trust us.
[1:09:02 – 1:09:07] Erik: Just trust us, because what, are they going to load up people in their motorboat and then just abandon canoes?
[1:09:07 – 1:09:07] Erik: Yeah.
[1:09:08 – 1:09:15] Erik: There’s a lot of that, too, where it’s just like there’s so many people that could need help, but you can’t help everybody.
[1:09:15 – 1:09:22] Erik: You really got to start doing like a kind of like your own personal triage of, you know, where can I be the most useful?
[1:09:23 – 1:09:28] Erik: Because once this whole thing goes through, just the the mental pressure.
[1:09:30 – 1:09:35] Erik: like challenge of trying to make yourself useful.
[1:09:35 – 1:09:35] Erik: Like, yeah, sure.
[1:09:35 – 1:09:39] Erik: You can just stop and start working in any direction.
[1:09:39 – 1:09:39] Erik: Yeah.
[1:09:39 – 1:09:41] Erik: This, I could clear this portage right now.
[1:09:42 – 1:09:43] Adam: They should just stay on the prairie portage.
[1:09:44 – 1:09:44] Adam: I could.
[1:09:44 – 1:09:48] Erik: Well, they end up back on the prairie portage cause they can’t leave on the road.
[1:09:48 – 1:09:55] Erik: Oh, so they get back in the boat and they start going out and we’ll get to what they experience once they’re back out on the water.
[1:09:55 – 1:10:00] Erik: And the people that they saw on the way down where they ended up on the way back up,
[1:10:00 – 1:10:22] Erik: and then what they need to do up at prairie portage and just to be able to have gone up that lake and then 10 minutes later you go back up and it’s just completely different doesn’t even look the same like i mean but then also to see that wall of weather moving at you what is like the do you know like the main track of it can you like
[1:10:23 – 1:10:24] Erik: Oh, there’s a map in the beginning here.
[1:10:24 – 1:10:28] Adam: I can show you why it was like the track of like horrible destruction.
[1:10:28 – 1:10:31] Adam: And like it, it was just sort of like a wind river.
[1:10:31 – 1:10:31] Adam: Yeah.
[1:10:32 – 1:10:36] Erik: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the trajectory map there.
[1:10:36 – 1:10:36] Erik: Yeah.
[1:10:37 – 1:10:40] Erik: But, you know, it’s something like that.
[1:10:40 – 1:10:50] Erik: You know, it’s like any time you look at, like, a town that had a big tornado hit.
[1:10:50 – 1:10:59] Erik: You know, it’s such a crazy fickleness to this neighbor’s house didn’t get touched and then across the street just gone, you know?
[1:11:00 – 1:11:18] Erik: And there’s a lot of that with, uh, with this storm, a little bit more like broad, like it kind of affected everybody, but in terms of like what trees came down, which trees didn’t, which trees came down on tents, which ones came down on people or canoes.
[1:11:19 – 1:11:26] Erik: I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it’s, uh, I mean, I’d rather bet my life savings on throw it on a
[1:11:27 – 1:11:31] Adam: I have all the different people marked on there where they were observing this from.
[1:11:31 – 1:11:32] Adam: That’s pretty sweet.
[1:11:32 – 1:11:34] Adam: It sets up the whole story.
[1:11:34 – 1:11:34] Adam: That’s a nice map.
[1:11:35 – 1:11:36] Adam: That’s a good map at the beginning.
[1:11:36 – 1:11:39] Adam: Shout out to that map on the second part, too, I’d say.
[1:11:39 – 1:11:40] Erik: Yeah.
[1:11:40 – 1:11:42] Erik: I mean, there’s a lot of stories in here.
[1:11:42 – 1:11:49] Erik: I’m kind of hitting the two big ones that I think are most applicable to listeners in terms of Boundary Waters campers.
[1:11:49 – 1:11:52] Erik: We’re not… Again, we’re not…
[1:11:54 – 1:12:19] Erik: giving you blow by blow description uh descriptions of this whole book there’s definitely plenty more in this i would highly recommend uh it’s a great i mean it’s just a good book to read easy short little chapters really good stories from people who experienced it um that’s all you really need in a in a retelling of something that’s happened this recently that again fortunately nobody was killed in there were some
[1:12:20 – 1:12:20] Erik: Not great.
[1:12:21 – 1:12:23] Adam: So people were killed in Maine, though?
[1:12:23 – 1:12:24] Erik: I mean, that’s what it sounds like.
[1:12:24 – 1:12:29] Erik: There must have been some loss of life out east because it didn’t happen in the Boundary Waters.
[1:12:30 – 1:12:31] Erik: Right.
[1:12:32 – 1:12:46] Erik: But yeah, we’ll definitely be getting to the group’s experiences of being camped and having absolutely no idea what was coming outside of waking up to just a disgustingly still muggy morning.
[1:12:46 – 1:12:46] Erik: Yeah.
[1:12:47 – 1:12:48] Erik: Trying to do your best in camp.
[1:12:49 – 1:12:50] Erik: I don’t know what, you know, to eat.
[1:12:51 – 1:12:54] Adam: It’s one of those mornings where it’s too hot to cook breakfast, even in a camp cooker.
[1:12:55 – 1:12:55] Erik: Yeah.
[1:12:55 – 1:13:03] Erik: Even in a camp cooker on a little stove, you just eat, like, a handful of, like, dried fruit and go swimming as much as possible, you know?
[1:13:03 – 1:13:05] Adam: Yeah.
[1:13:05 – 1:13:14] Adam: One of the trips when Natalie and I were up on Arrow, we woke up to that kind of morning, and it was like I was trying to, like, make, like, an egg, like, frittata.
[1:13:15 – 1:13:15] Adam: Oh.
[1:13:15 – 1:13:18] Adam: It was like 85 in the morning and just hot.
[1:13:18 – 1:13:23] Adam: I was sitting on the shoreline with my feet in the lake while trying to cook the breakfast to stay cool enough to cook.
[1:13:24 – 1:13:25] Adam: That’s all we had for breakfast.
[1:13:26 – 1:13:30] Adam: Then it got done and I could barely eat it because it’s just too hot to eat a hot breakfast.
[1:13:30 – 1:13:30] Adam: Yuck.
[1:13:32 – 1:13:36] Erik: Well, yeah, the heat like that doesn’t really do anything for your hunger.
[1:13:36 – 1:13:38] Erik: You’re not even really that hungry.
[1:13:38 – 1:13:41] Erik: And then you’re going to eat a bunch of hot eggs right now too.
[1:13:42 – 1:13:46] Erik: I’ve been on most of my trips have been in the spring or the fall.
[1:13:46 – 1:13:51] Erik: So I have a pretty close relationship with cooking on and around fires.
[1:13:51 – 1:14:01] Erik: But any of those like middle of summer trips, that’s why I’m always surprised when the people cancel a trip or they’re just – they couldn’t –
[1:14:01 – 1:14:05] Erik: possibly comprehend going to the Bonjou waters during a fire ban, you know, right.
[1:14:05 – 1:14:06] Erik: Really?
[1:14:06 – 1:14:17] Erik: I don’t know this at the end of the day, long days, hot, or especially like my, you get a little one going at night, just kind of for that little light crackle as the, you know, the, the light of the day is, is disappearing.
[1:14:17 – 1:14:17] Erik: Um,
[1:14:17 – 1:14:21] Erik: But I don’t need that morning fire when it’s 90 degrees.
[1:14:21 – 1:14:21] Erik: The sun’s up.
[1:14:21 – 1:14:24] Erik: It’s up before you did before you got up.
[1:14:24 – 1:14:30] Erik: But I’ve never had an issue with being out there in the summer and just like calling it and then not having a morning fire.
[1:14:31 – 1:14:31] Erik: I don’t know.
[1:14:31 – 1:14:33] Erik: When’s the last time we’ve had a morning fire together?
[1:14:33 – 1:14:36] Adam: We don’t generally do morning fire unless we’re planning on staying.
[1:14:36 – 1:14:38] Erik: Yeah, we did that one on Crabbe.
[1:14:39 – 1:14:41] Erik: Well, yeah, but we were just, yeah, we were there for a few days.
[1:14:41 – 1:14:42] Erik: We were hunkered down.
[1:14:42 – 1:14:47] Erik: The last place I can think of where we got up and moved was the island on Adams.
[1:14:47 – 1:14:48] Erik: Yeah.
[1:14:49 – 1:14:50] Erik: We didn’t make breakfast.
[1:14:50 – 1:14:54] Erik: I think it always does also kind of depend on how much wood we’ve left ourselves.
[1:14:54 – 1:15:00] Adam: Yeah, if there’s a good pile of wood left and we have this stuff to do a hot breakfast over the fire, then why not?
[1:15:01 – 1:15:02] Adam: If you’re not in a big hurry that day.
[1:15:02 – 1:15:04] Erik: It was kind of like a cool, cloudy morning.
[1:15:04 – 1:15:06] Erik: It was a shady campsite.
[1:15:06 – 1:15:10] Adam: We were up early, too, to make that happen because we did have a long day that day.
[1:15:10 – 1:15:10] Erik: Yeah.
[1:15:11 – 1:15:11] Erik: Yeah, we did.
[1:15:12 – 1:15:36] Erik: yeah um so looking forward to continuing on uh the stories uh from gunflint falling and hopefully we can maybe go through and i don’t know maybe they’re all great maybe we’ll just read all the responses from the storm stories but if you haven’t responded and you’re listening to this now it’s still up it’s a subreddit our tumble home casts
[1:15:37 – 1:15:39] Erik: Go on if you’ve got a storm story.
[1:15:39 – 1:15:43] Erik: I mean, heck, even if it’s not a Boundary Water storm story, we’ll read it.
[1:15:43 – 1:15:44] Erik: I don’t know if we’ll read it aloud.
[1:15:45 – 1:15:45] Erik: Storm and camp.
[1:15:45 – 1:15:48] Erik: But I’ll read it with my eyes and into my brain.
[1:15:48 – 1:15:52] Adam: We’ll have to go back and find the story that Deke wrote about the hail on Rose.
[1:15:52 – 1:15:53] Adam: He’ll have us tell that story.
[1:15:54 – 1:15:55] Adam: I know he’s told it on this show before.
[1:15:56 – 1:15:58] Erik: Yeah, that was for a second.
[1:15:58 – 1:16:13] Erik: I totally thought we had done a storm story, but it was the unexplained eerie occurrences in the Boundary Waters from last fall, and we used the line from that as a title for an episode.
[1:16:13 – 1:16:15] Erik: It was Sea Green and Yellow.
[1:16:15 – 1:16:17] Adam: Sea Green and Yellow, another color.
[1:16:18 – 1:16:21] Adam: Excellent description of colors in the wilderness.
[1:16:21 – 1:16:26] Erik: Yeah, and I guess this one is quite blackish, darkish black.
[1:16:26 – 1:16:27] Adam: We’ll have to go back and look it up.
[1:16:28 – 1:16:28] Adam: We’ll find it.
[1:16:28 – 1:16:30] Erik: It’s the title of the episode.
[1:16:30 – 1:16:31] Erik: We’re talking about it right now.
[1:16:31 – 1:16:33] Erik: You’re looking at it on your phone.
[1:16:33 – 1:16:34] Erik: You know what it is.
[1:16:34 – 1:16:34] Erik: Shut up.
[1:16:34 – 1:16:35] Erik: We know.
[1:16:35 – 1:16:36] Erik: You titled the episode.
[1:16:36 – 1:16:37] Erik: Stop talking about it.
[1:16:37 – 1:16:42] Adam: It’s just a very ominous feeling, that phrase.
[1:16:43 – 1:16:53] Adam: I would like to give one more shout-out to Andrew and Ben for the New Glarus beers for episode 253 of Tumble Home.
[1:16:53 – 1:17:01] Adam: Somewhere along the way there during the retelling of part one here, I found my way into – I cracked open another one.
[1:17:01 – 1:17:05] Adam: I got a two-woman lager here, which is pretty good.
[1:17:05 – 1:17:08] Adam: This is excellent, ice cold, and –
[1:17:11 – 1:17:14] Adam: They often call the derecho the two women of the sky.
[1:17:14 – 1:17:15] Adam: Do you think?
[1:17:15 – 1:17:15] Adam: I don’t think that.
[1:17:15 – 1:17:17] Adam: Anybody’s ever said that before?
[1:17:17 – 1:17:20] Adam: I retract the statement.
[1:17:20 – 1:17:21] Adam: This is a pretty good one.
[1:17:21 – 1:17:23] Adam: I’ve definitely had this from New Glarus.
[1:17:24 – 1:17:27] Adam: Employee-owned brewing out of southern Wisconsin.
[1:17:27 – 1:17:27] Erik: Yeah.
[1:17:27 – 1:17:28] Erik: Excellent.
[1:17:28 – 1:17:28] Erik: Yeah.
[1:17:28 – 1:17:36] Erik: There’s a lot of things in my my learning or my attempts to learn off and on over the years.
[1:17:37 – 1:17:46] Erik: My last two winters down in Mexico to try to have some semblance of Spanish, Espanol at my little bit of disposal.
[1:17:46 – 1:17:52] Erik: And my directions are always very easily remembered because of derecho and derecho.
[1:17:53 – 1:17:55] Erik: Derecho is a Spanish word.
[1:17:55 – 1:17:56] Erik: It means straight.
[1:17:56 – 1:18:20] Adam: straight line yeah derecho means right and izquierda is left buddy izquierda buddy buddy mike who i worked with back in 2001 had an aluminum boat captain mike captain mike had a boat we raced it in the uh paddle and portage event a couple times in madison when we were both living there and uh name of that boat was derecho
[1:18:20 – 1:18:21] Erik: Oh, nice.
[1:18:21 – 1:18:22] Adam: It’s good.
[1:18:22 – 1:18:29] Adam: Yeah, I actually had it for a while because he didn’t have a place to keep a boat, and I believe Buddy Fritz ended up getting that boat.
[1:18:30 – 1:18:31] Adam: Buddy Fritz, are you listening?
[1:18:31 – 1:18:32] Adam: Not a captain.
[1:18:32 – 1:18:33] Adam: Not that I know of.
[1:18:34 – 1:18:37] Adam: It’s been a while since I’ve seen Mr. Fritz.
[1:18:38 – 1:18:44] Adam: So if you’re listening, I encourage you to get your captain’s license, and I hope the derecho is still floating out there somewhere.
[1:18:44 – 1:18:45] Erik: That’s who had it last?
[1:18:45 – 1:18:46] Erik: Yeah.
[1:18:47 – 1:18:48] Adam: The last of my knowledge, yeah.
[1:18:48 – 1:18:48] Adam: Was it Grumman?
[1:18:49 – 1:18:50] Adam: I don’t think so.
[1:18:50 – 1:18:51] Adam: I think it was Illumicraft.
[1:18:51 – 1:18:52] SPEAKER_02: Illumicraft.
[1:18:52 – 1:18:52] Adam: I nailed it.
[1:18:55 – 1:18:56] Erik: Yes.
[1:18:56 – 1:18:58] Erik: That one extra syllable in there.
[1:18:58 – 1:19:00] Adam: It just always gets me.
[1:19:01 – 1:19:02] Adam: It’s fun.
[1:19:02 – 1:19:03] Adam: I don’t know.
[1:19:03 – 1:19:05] Adam: At the time, you know, it was like…
[1:19:06 – 1:19:15] Adam: Neither of us were here during the big storm, but it was fresh in everyone’s memories that year in 2001 when we met each other and paddled a lot together.
[1:19:17 – 1:19:20] Adam: So it influenced the naming of his boat, and yeah.
[1:19:21 – 1:19:22] Adam: Kind of fun how that happened.
[1:19:22 – 1:19:24] Adam: Who knows where that boat is these days?
[1:19:24 – 1:19:27] Erik: I have no frame of reference in terms of memory of it.
[1:19:27 – 1:19:33] Erik: I was full-blown down in the cities, pre-high school youth.
[1:19:33 – 1:19:34] Erik: I don’t even remember.
[1:19:35 – 1:19:35] Erik: There’s some events.
[1:19:36 – 1:19:38] Adam: I don’t remember hearing about it when it happened live.
[1:19:38 – 1:19:38] Adam: Yeah, no.
[1:19:39 – 1:19:41] Adam: It was when I got there in 2001, two years later.
[1:19:41 – 1:19:46] Adam: And then we did have a big storm or two that summer where it was like everybody in the cellar.
[1:19:46 – 1:19:48] Adam: Everybody was real shy on it.
[1:19:50 – 1:20:16] Adam: yeah i’m sure a little gun shy i bet but uh nothing of that nature we did have a couple big trees come down that summer though i remember there’s at least two i remember one time just like sprinting for the lodge as like this storm came in just diving into the cellar before uh you know a few explosions happened out near the outhouse i couldn’t even imagine why would an outhouse explode being well it’s a crazy wind uh just in case
[1:20:18 – 1:20:19] Adam: The just in case.
[1:20:19 – 1:20:19] Adam: Nice.
[1:20:19 – 1:20:20] Adam: Way out there.
[1:20:20 – 1:20:21] Adam: No, this was like the main one.
[1:20:22 – 1:20:23] Adam: Group rates.
[1:20:23 – 1:20:24] Adam: Yeah.
[1:20:24 – 1:20:28] Adam: This is the one where I drew the picture of the moon with the mustache on it.
[1:20:28 – 1:20:29] Adam: That was your drawing.
[1:20:29 – 1:20:30] Adam: It was nice.
[1:20:30 – 1:20:32] Adam: More of a painting than a drawing.
[1:20:32 – 1:20:32] Adam: Yeah.
[1:20:33 – 1:20:33] Adam: Yeah.
[1:20:33 – 1:20:34] Adam: That was my work.
[1:20:34 – 1:20:35] Adam: I don’t know if it’s still up there.
[1:20:36 – 1:20:36] Erik: Yeah, who knows?
[1:20:37 – 1:20:37] Erik: Nobody.
[1:20:37 – 1:20:38] Erik: Who’s to say?
[1:20:38 – 1:20:40] Erik: Who’s to say what’s going on there?
[1:20:40 – 1:20:43] Adam: We’ll be back someday to inspect the outhouse.
[1:20:43 – 1:20:47] Erik: Someday we’ll be back solely for outhouse inspection.
[1:20:48 – 1:20:49] Adam: And I want a buttermilk pancake.
[1:20:50 – 1:20:50] Erik: Yeah.
[1:20:50 – 1:20:51] Erik: All right.
[1:20:52 – 1:20:53] Erik: Well, thank you for part one.
[1:20:53 – 1:21:02] Adam: Um, that was, uh, I’m on the edge of my seat and, uh, I know what’s going to happen, but I cannot wait to hear it described by Carrie journalism Griffith.
[1:21:03 – 1:21:03] Adam: That’s right.
[1:21:03 – 1:21:04] Erik: Thank you, Carrie.
[1:21:05 – 1:21:12] Erik: Hopefully, uh, like I said, whatever you need to do, you know, library, Kindle, buy the hard copy.
[1:21:13 – 1:21:14] Erik: It’s worth the read.
[1:21:14 – 1:21:17] Erik: We’re just a little, uh, light, uh,
[1:21:19 – 1:21:30] Erik: addition to the whole story and we’re happy that the story was nicely put together in a easily read book
[1:21:31 – 1:21:32] Adam: 25 years ago.
[1:21:32 – 1:21:33] Adam: Crazy.
[1:21:33 – 1:21:34] Adam: Coming up this week.
[1:21:34 – 1:21:35] Erik: Did we even say that at the beginning?
[1:21:35 – 1:21:37] Erik: I think I mentioned it was the 25th anniversary.
[1:21:37 – 1:21:38] Adam: 25 years ago.
[1:21:38 – 1:21:42] Adam: And this is going to be out on the 30th.
[1:21:42 – 1:21:43] Adam: Yeah.
[1:21:43 – 1:21:44] Adam: You’re hearing this.
[1:21:44 – 1:21:46] Adam: Fourth of July is coming right up here this week.
[1:21:46 – 1:21:47] Adam: It’s nuts.
[1:21:47 – 1:21:47] Erik: Yeah.
[1:21:48 – 1:21:48] Erik: God’s birthday.
[1:21:53 – 1:21:53] Adam: Bless you, Jesus.
[1:21:54 – 1:21:54] Adam: All right.
[1:21:55 – 1:21:58] Erik: With that, thank you for listening once again.
[1:21:58 – 1:22:02] Erik: Thank you all for listening, and thanks for the sponsorships.
[1:22:02 – 1:22:05] Erik: Thanks for the Patreons out there.
[1:22:05 – 1:22:11] Erik: We got, yeah, there’s more coming your way and a whole lot out there now.
[1:22:11 – 1:22:14] Adam: It’s a big summer for us here on Tumble Home in the shed.
[1:22:14 – 1:22:14] Erik: It’s a big summer.
[1:22:15 – 1:22:19] Erik: Big mustache energy, big Tumble Home energy also coming with it.
[1:22:19 – 1:22:25] Adam: We got two canoes, two mustaches, and a lot of riz here in the shed this summer.
[1:22:25 – 1:22:27] Erik: Yeah, there it is.
[1:22:27 – 1:22:29] Erik: First time we’ve used that word on the podcast.
[1:22:29 – 1:22:29] Adam: We’re modern.
[1:22:30 – 1:22:32] Adam: We know what’s going on, NGL.
[1:22:33 – 1:22:35] Adam: Pop your cork, Eric.
[1:22:35 – 1:22:36] Adam: Let the water flow, brother.
[1:22:36 – 1:22:37] Adam: I thought you said corp.
[1:22:39 – 1:22:41] Adam: Pop your corpse.
[1:22:42 – 1:22:45] Erik: Pop your cork, Eric, and let the water flow, brother.
[1:22:45 – 1:22:46] Erik: That’s what the kids are saying now.
[1:22:46 – 1:22:47] Erik: Don’t get me started on Gat.
[1:23:48 – 1:23:49] UNKNOWN: Bye.
[1:24:33 – 1:24:44] UNKNOWN: And the rain came down Down, down, down And the rain came down Down, down, down