Stormy Weather

The city of Mahnomen, well village is more like it, is the county seat. Roy Lake is a nice afternoon-trip on a hot day. The tornado, EF-2, tore one house apart (no one injured) in Mahnomen, nearby, it threw a John Deere combine against a big bailer, and a few minutes later, was spotted over Roy Lake--no damage reported there.

It missed me! (By about 8 miles, but it missed.)

But, I did get some wind:

Last week I drove under the branch, now I drive around it.

  It is about 12-14 inches in diameter. You can see the new cracks at the Y and along the branch.

 I will cut off the part that sticks down and see if it takes enough weight off so the rest of the branch will survive.

A mile down the road, this field suffered a worse fate:

It might be hard to see, but this field of oats (not wheat as previously posted) should be standing taller than those points sticking up. I'm not sure how well it will recover.

I talked with the man who is farming this field. He said that he planted a new variety of oats that are supposed to me resistant to such damage. The stalks were supposed to bend like a thread of warm taffy around your finger, but instead creased like a straw bent over the edge of a glass. So, not enough nutrition is getting to the heads resulting in poorly fill-out grain that my have little or no nutritional value for man or beast.