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Deadly Weather


Airdale

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What a weird storm! They were very unprepared. They are lucky to be alive. The pictures look rather like our snow storm last winter, the snowpocalypse 2019, that shredded much of our forests around here. I really want a Garmin InReach!

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In hindsight they could have been better prepared, especially considering that the lake is nearly 9,000 feet up and is surrounded by numerous peaks over 10,000 feet in altitude. I'm acquainted with Bill, he has a very successful real estate business and had a lot of office equipment that I worked on before retiring; he's a good, level headed guy. The Tobacco Root Mountains are one of several isolated groups that fringe the eastern section of the Rockies in Montana. The range is roughly 20 miles wide by 30 long, not much different than the Elkhorn Range where I live  though the tallest peaks are about 1,000 feet higher. They can generate their own weather patterns, not unlike Mt. Rainier.

 

I've been through an area hit by a microburst, though at the time I don't believe the term was in use, and the devastation was incredible. It was in the summer of '67 between my sophomore and junior years of high school and a close friend and I were doing a two day hike through the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness northwest of Helena. We got a bit off course and came down the north face of a mountain rather than the west face and the entire very steep slope was pine trees downed like giant pick-up-sticks. We thought a tornado must have hit it; it took at least two hours to reach the bottom taking our packs off and setting them on downed tree trunks which we then slid or crawled under. It must have happened not too long before as the pine needles were still green and lots of soil was still clumped around the upended roots.

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  • gigantor featured this topic

Wow, a similar storm happened across country (or 1400 miles) from this location in the past couple weeks.  I was in my car when all of a sudden it got as dark as night, a minute later there was a wind that seriously rocked the car with a single thunder that lasted a long, long time that shook the ground.  Another couple minutes and it was raining so hard it was coming down in buckets.  Within 10 minutes it was over.

 

I can't imagine what these folks went through!  I was a little nervous and I didn't have trees crashing down in front and behind me.  Then to think you're going to walk out, only to find that isn't going to happen...  You can't say they were lucky, but Someone was watching over them.

 

I just wonder about the other person(s) that was shooting.  Did they make it?  Were they found?

Edited by JustCurious
Fixing grammar
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I haven't heard anything more, but we're vacationing in northern Idaho and won't be home until Saturday. Even though the helos did a thermal scan grid, it was long enough after the event that if someone were suffering from hypothermia they may not have appeared against the background, especially if sheltered under fallen trees or other debris. Any additional info I find will be posted.

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  • gigantor unfeatured this topic

Wow, that's intense! quite a mess. First thing i thought after reading was yes, they seemed a wee bit unprepared to go into those mountains. Glad they made it out ok.

We had one of those microbursts come through Mid Coast Maine several years ago. It took out huge swaths of old oaks, along with the better part of remaining old elms yet to succumb to the blight. It left an incredible mess.  It was in the Summer, we got to experience it on the water in our 29' sloop. I was only about 6nm out from the harbor at the time, dropped the main and hanked on the storm jib, still way too much sail, thought the old sitka spruce mast was going to snap off. Quite a harrowing sail back in. Not that I didn't have a healthy respect for the elements but that experience provided me with more. We were on the edge of it too, bright sun but still 55 knot winds.

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