Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Summer Storm Track

A followup to Tuesday's storm track through Marathon County:  We personally were not hit hard.   We took a ride around the "block" -- around several blocks -- and saw some serious crop damage in a swath about 1.5 miles wide going from NW to SE through the towns of Hamburg, Berlin, and Maine -- somewhat parallel to County Hwy A.

Corn and soybeans shredded by hail, for example. Grain fields flattened. A few uprooted trees, a bunch of broken trees and downed branches.  I think one part of Hwy A was closed off a while due to downed trees, branches and power poles.   One metal shed roof on Hwy A was peeled partly off.  One Ginseng garden had slatted wooden shade panels going every which way; another couple ginseng gardens with black shade nets ripped loose.  Did not take pictures.   Local newspaper's pictures were mostly of in-town stuff; doesn't look like they got out to the boonies.

However!    if the old German folk saying holds true, we should be just about done with this year's storm track.  The saying -- in English, because I can't do the Plattdeutsch version -- says that if there is a hard enough rain on mid-summer's day (June 21)  to raise little bubbles when it hits the pavement, which was true here this June, then there will be another 6 weeks of wet weather.  ("Then the farmer can sleep";  I guess because it's too wet to go in the fields.)
Credit goes to Gary Klingbeil of Wausau for knowing German proverbs; aka "Sprichworter" aka "Bauernregel"  = "Farmers Rules"

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