It’s going to take a while to get used to this skyline when heading west out of Bismarck! I never realized how much that bridge seemed like a “door across the river” until it was gone. Having nothing overhead while driving across the river is really weird, especially with the roof open. There won’t be any more of those days until Spring, however…unless I get cabin fever and turn stubborn (like THAT ever happens…)

This was taken during the warm weather of the first weekend of November. What a difference a few days make!

The rain keeps coming down but it don’t bother me,
In fact it brings me back a favorite memory.
Of you laughing in the rain,
Your clothes are soaking wet…
Standin’ ‘neath the branches waitin’ for a kiss.

The rain is working very hard,
It’s got to water every little seed.
It’s beautifully ordinary,
Making life seem very good indeed… (whoa-oh, whoa-oh)
Beautifully ordinary,
Life with you is very good indeed… (whoa-oh, whoa-oh)

The rain keeps fallin’ down…

(“The Rain” – by the Subdudes, but best performed by my friends Tucker’d Out.)

This was the scene as I headed out tonight, looking for some overdue sunset photos. At this point we were barely over a week since the last supercell flew past Bismarck, as documented in an earlier post. But oh, another one was on its way.

While running around with my boy this evening, I noticed a few key ingredients for some meteorological action: heat, humidity, and odd clouds, as shown above. As I ventured out in my truck, I noticed quite a few other people parked along the way, cameras in hand. I bet they got some great shots, but alas…none of them had my favorite vantage point!

I ventured up to one of my favorite windmills to get a shot of the weird, marshmallow-like clouds that were hovering overhead. By this point already I could see that some damage was looming on the northern horizon.

Here you can see the last remnants of the evening’s sunset on the left, and the pure nastiness that was brewing on the right. This was a textbook supercell, just like last Saturday’s, and it was on the move. Quickly. If you look closely you can see the headlights of a truck heading south in an effort to flee the storm. As they passed me, I realized two things: the storm was bearing down on me incredibly quickly, and I was a LONG ways from my truck.

So there I found myself: on a hill, beneath a tall metal object, with a nasty storm overtaking me faster than I could ever hope to run. I’m sure after my post on homosexuality, there are plenty of people who would have liked to see some lightning enter this story, but such is not the case. This storm came so fast, I literally RAN, with my camera still on the tripod, toward the truck. I was past the rusty windmill when I heard a nasty, metallic sound. I whipped around to see that the wind had spun the head of the windmill around, and that’s when the blast of cold wind hit me. It almost knocked me off my feet, but I have to admit the cold air felt good. So of course I took some pictures. Oh, come on…you would, too!

Then I REALLY dashed for the truck. I ran several different events in track back in high school, but none were this frantic. By this time the wind was almost pushing me over, and the rain was starting. I dashed to the truck, did a hasty Rockford after what seemed like an eighth-mile in reverse, then booked it back to town. I stopped along Highway 1804 to take this shot, then hurried back home. By this point I was seeing horizontal rotation on the leading edge of the storm, and some funnels dancing along the edge as well. By this point, however, it was obvious that the storm would miss Bismarck.

As I post this, I got this PIX message on my cellphone of the tail end of the clouds. Looks like quite a system! Once again I got an eyeful of a major storm development, a few pictures to boot, and managed not to catch a lightning bolt or a hailstone. People have told me that North Dakota thunderstorms are among the most beautiful of sights, and after tonight I think I’d have to agree.

A week ago I was walking on a sandbar with my lovely wife; it was a date night, provided by some friends who not only invited us to leave our little boys with their family, but also provided a gift card for the Texas Roadhouse. It was in return for some computer work I’d done for them a while back, but I feel like I was dramatically overpaid by their hospitality. We’re really grateful; it’s not often we get a chance to break away and just have some sweetheart time! We also had some excitement, as you can see from the image above.

No, it wouldn’t be a bona fide “date night” if I’d brought my camera with…but she did buy me this fancy cell phone with a keyboard and a pretty darn nice camera on it, so I put it to use as the ominous looking clouds came our way. We cut our romantic walk short, made our way back to the truck in case hailstones started falling, and were surprised to be met with only a few light sprinkles. Folks on the east end of town, including a few friends of ours, were not so lucky.

I took a little video with my phone, too. The quality isn’t very good, but it shows what was bearing down on us as we walked along the path from the sandbar to Sertoma Park:

If you don’t see play and volume controls, roll over the bottom of the picture with your mouse and they should appear. There’s a five second title at the beginning, so don’t think it’s not playing…just give it a few seconds and the video will begin.

After we got back to our truck and watched what to us was a “non-event” pass over our heads, we went to TCBY and got some treats, then parked on the east end of town to eat and watch a glorious double rainbow form. Then we found ourselves unable to be away from the boys any longer and went to pick them up. Ah, family life.

Luke Graner, my favorite local performer, provided 4th & Broadway with some tunes today at noon. I was fortunate enough to be able to take some time from my day to hang out and enjoy the music while trying to gnaw through one of those big brownie ice cream sandwiches!

I post an occasional “Luke Graner love fest” on here because he’s my friend, co-worker, and he helped me with my animated Flash banner at the top of this site. Oh yeah, I’ve loved his music going all the way back to the Curious Yello days. Today Luke played some of my favorites, and I was able to show my appreciation by grabbing some pictures.

I met a nice lady at Wells Fargo who let me take some photos from their corner office, just above the area where the bands play. Notice how Luke plays barefoot; he uses a Boomerang digital loop recorder to lay down tracks of drum, guitar, vocals, or whatever…then sing and play along with the loops he’s just recorded. That way this “one man band” can consist of backing vocals and multiple instruments. That in itself is pretty cool to hear, but I think it’s also a good lesson of how a song is composed. You can sit and watch Luke build a song from the ground up, sing his heart out, then slowly pick the song back apart as he stops the loops one by one. It’s very educational to a non-musician.

This was the one event that could draw me to the Urban Harvest. I just don’t get anything from the whole “hippie vibe” I suppose; I’m not into the jewelry or new age stuff, and I think buying tie-dye items that someone else made is so contrary to the idea of tie-dyeing in the first place. Hey, I think I just stumbled upon something that a true “hippie” might agree with!

Yet another storm promising nasty hail, wind, and heavy rain split in two and circumvented the capital city. I kid friends who work at the refinery and the power plant north of Mandan, saying that whatever they put into the atmosphere must be working!

I headed north with my camera and a friend who’s in town for the week, and spotted these cool clouds to the east. They were the type of weird rolling clouds known for hail, but failed to drop any on us. That’s good, actually. One of the clouds to the northwest was casting a shadow on them, as you can see on the left side of the photo. It made for a pretty unique sliver of time, caught on my camera sensor.

It’s hard to do the scene justice with only 500 pixels from left to right, so you can click here for a larger version.

I couldn’t help but think of one of my favorite gospel hymns as the clouds rolled past tonight. I was on my way to church when the tornado siren near our house began to blare, so I unloaded the boys and took them back into the house to see what was rolling our way. Thankfully, all the action missed us. Stanton saw three inch hail tonight!