Windy weather: July 13, 2024 storms to hit large area

Editor’s Note: We’re aware that similar storms hit the Tri-State region from North Dakota to Nebraska and from Montana to Minnesota this past weekend, to an extent that exceeds the scope of one article. We know many in our readership are struggling with the effects of extreme weather this year, from drought to wind to flooding to fires. If you have a story you’d like to share, please email us at [email protected]. We thank you.

Montana

The National Weather Service in Billings, Montana, reported severe thunderstorms across the southeastern part of the state on the afternoon and evening of Saturday, July 13, 2024. The report stated that the storms initially appeared as isolated supercells before developing into a linear mode as they reached the Montana-South Dakota border. Custer, Fallon and Carter counties all reported extensive wind damage from uprooted trees to downed power lines. There were no deaths or serious injuries reported from these storms.

Storms hit the Miles City area around 7 p.m.

In Miles City, reports and photos showed hardwood trees completely uprooted or snapped. Power poles were down, roofs and shingles blown off buildings. Much of the city was without power for much of the night into Sunday. Power poles were completely snapped in Carter County. Crops were toppled, and barns and storage sheds were ripped apart.

The National Weather Service states that “straight line winds are the primary culprit. Although the damage is extreme, there is no evidence that a tornado occurred in these storms. Microbursts could easily have occurred in the storms, but there is no way to confirm this either. Although the observed wind gusts were strong, the damage indicates that stronger winds occurred in these storms, estimated at 80 to 100 mph. The highest observed wind gust was 79 mph in Baker.”

The Custer-Gallatin National Forest has closed roads due to fallen trees in the Sioux Ranger District and asked visitors to stay away until damage is properly assessed.

Connie Hjorth, director of the Custer County Farm Service Agency, said the emergency management board will meet July 22 to discuss storm damage in the region.

“The town itself was hit the hardest,” she said. “A lot of corn was damaged and some outbuildings. A lot of farmers in the Kinsey area were really affected.”

Chad Sutter and his family live north of Miles City, Montana. He was in town to have dinner with his wife and daughter Saturday night.

“I looked north, where our house is, and saw a huge, dark, black cloud coming towards us at quite a speed,” he said.

The family rushed home to get everything to safety.

“About 20 seconds after we put everything away and closed the garage door, it hit,” Sutter said. “The wind was just wild.”

Sutter’s neighbor, Patti Blaquiere, and her husband were out haying when the storm hit. Their weather station recorded winds of 94 mph. The Miles City airport, which Sutter can see from his home, reported gusts of 70-72 mph.

“The house was fine, but it caved in the big garage door and broke windows out of a shed,” he said. “I’m doing a siding project and it ripped the foam off the walls.”

Sutter has a number of small sailboats that he uses to teach children how to sail. A trailer with several boats was also lifted and thrown over a fence into his daughter’s 4-H pigsty.

“The pigs were in their barn and they were doing fine,” he said.

The boats had it worse.

“It took a lot of trees down, snapped a couple of them off six or eight feet off the ground. We have quaking poplars on one side of the house and it blew them down hard enough. A lot of the old poplars in the parks (in Miles City) were blown right down, and the parks were full of broken limbs and branches. A wooden play set in the soccer complex on the northeast side of town was picked up, tied in knots and smashed to pieces.”

Miles City was without power for most of the night and Sunday, with some people without power into Tuesday.

When Sutter’s phone rang with the storm warnings, he checked the radar.

“The storm cell seemed to stretch all the way from Wolf Point to Miles City. It was one big storm,” he said. “When we had the wind here, my brother-in-law in Circle got half-dollar-sized hail.”

According to Sutter, the worst of the sustained high winds lasted about 20 minutes.

“It felt like a wall of wind was blowing against it,” he said. “Everything was blowing one way. I have my neighbor’s stuff in my yard, part of their roof in my pasture. Some of my stuff is in the wind from my neighbor. It was exciting.”

Sutter works as a plan reviewer for the state’s building code department.

“We tell people to design their buildings to withstand 115 miles per hour winds,” he said. “Ninety-four miles per hour is pretty close.”

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Sharon Moore Miles City Storm

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south dakota

“As the evening progressed, the cluster of supercells moved southeastward out of Montana, coalescing into a line of significantly severe thunderstorms that brought destructive winds to much of western and central South Dakota,” the Rapid City National Weather Service said. “Widespread measured wind gusts of 80 mph or greater were recorded from near the Montana-South Dakota state line eastward to near the Missouri River, with the highest gusts of over 100 mph observed in Butte County. The Storm Prediction Center classified this line of storms as a derecho, a term reserved for particularly widespread, long-lasting, and significant wind storms.”

Justin Weiss was chopping silage when the storm passed through the Maurine, South Dakota, area where he and his family run the Pine Creek Angus Ranch.

“I was in the helicopter and all of a sudden I couldn’t see two inches out the windshield,” Weiss said. “I grabbed my seat belt because I wasn’t sure where we were going. It’s a pretty heavy piece of equipment and it was rocking and shaking like it was going somewhere.”

It was dark, so he couldn’t see anything. When it got a little lighter, he jumped out of the helicopter and got into his pickup. A few drops of slushy fell and he thought it was going to hail.

“’Oh, here it comes,’ I thought, but it wasn’t hailing. It would have been bad if there had been hail with all that wind.”

There was quite a bit of rain, but Weiss wasn’t sure exactly how much.

“I don’t know how much wind would have hit the rain gauge,” he said.

When the storm passed, he discovered that the storm had moved shipping containers across the site, bucked workshop doors, moved a truck and trailer carrying alfalfa silage, and lifted an aluminum truck rim.

“The ledge was at the store door and we found it about 200 feet west of the store,” Weiss said.

The wind was coming from the northwest, so it was hard to guess which way the edge would go.

“It was by far the strongest wind I’ve ever experienced,” he said.

Quentin Gerbracht lives west of Maurine.

“When that storm hit, it sounded like a freight train was going through the house,” he said. “It didn’t settle down at all.”

The storm hit Cedar Canyon Bible Camp, just a few miles north of Gerbracht. The camp is located in a deep canyon and hosts children for three weeks in July. Gerbracht was surprised by the damage the storm caused to the camp.

“There were a lot of trees down, and not many that didn’t have the tops off,” he said. “The community really came together and cleaned it up on Sunday. We had people come from all over to help clean up: Bison, Union Center, Faith. The locals came with equipment and others came with chainsaws. I don’t know how many loads of trees and debris we pulled out. We were very thankful that it happened when it did and that no kids were hurt.”

Gerbracht and his family were inside the house when the storm hit around 9:30 p.m.

“We didn’t know it at the time, but it picked up a granary, rammed it into my son’s car, rolled it over my wife’s car and rammed it into the house,” he said. “Sunshine’s car and the granary were totaled.”

Gerbrachts was in the process of renovating the old Maurine Garage and had put a new roof on the building last fall, applied spray foam insulation and repaired the doors.

“It took down the Maurine garage that’s been there forever,” he said. “It pushed the doors in, lifted the new roof and ripped the whole back wall off.”

When the roof flew off, it landed on Owen Johnson’s car.

Gerbracht said he lost five pieces of windbreak, some were in the northwest wind, and some were in the opposite direction. Their yearlings blew through the fence and into the neighbor’s pasture, and hay bales went through several fences.

“I’ve never seen him play with so many hay bales before, it was like playing marbles,” he said. “He was rolling my hay bales through the fence to the neighbors and rolling the neighbor’s bales into our fields. He took one hay bale, rolled it over and put it on my disc. I guess he thought I needed more weight on the disc.”

Gerbracht had some old divers on the spot, blocked so they couldn’t roll. They found the divers two and a half to three miles away, in three different spots.

“They must have been sucked through the air to get away from where I had them,” he said. “It was definitely a different wind. When it hit, you couldn’t see our garage right in front of the house.”

Photos by Sunshine and Quentin Gerbracht, Maurine, South Dakota