Minnesota Prairie Roots

Redwood County farmland only miles from my hometown of Vesta. This photo was taken last spring.

ABOUT MID-MORNING TODAY, an e-mail popped into my in-box. “Windy greetings” the subject line read. I clicked.

“Are you blowing away down there too?” wrote my cousin Dawn. “This is just nasty.”

She didn’t explain how nasty, but I can about guess. Dawn lives in Redwood County, smack dab in the middle of the Minnesota prairie—the place of endless fields, wide open spaces and few trees to break the unrelenting wind.

Big skies, wide open spaces and wind are a part of the landscape in southwestern Minnesota, where I shot this cornfield image about two months ago.

And today, from all I’ve read and heard, those winds will blow strong and sustained at 30 – 40 mph, sometimes reaching gusts of 60 mph. Dawn’s right. That’s downright nasty. And scary.

I speak from experience. This past summer I was caught, along with three family members, for 45 minutes in a car in a night-time thunderstorm that packed 70 mph winds. We were on unfamiliar Redwood County Road 5 between Walnut Grove and my hometown of Vesta when the storm hit.

I have never been more frightened in my life. Torrential rain in pitch black darkness pierced periodically by jagged lightning. Winds buffeting and rocking the car, flattening roadside grasses to the gravel shoulders. No radio. No cell phone service. No way of knowing where we were, what lay ahead of us, when the storm would end.

That July night I pressed my head against the back of the car seat in prayer. My 78-year-old mom kept telling us we were in the safest place we could be although I didn’t believe her for a second and I told her so. But I suppose it’s just natural for a mother to comfort her child, even if that daughter is in her 50s.

So…, when you start talking wind, strong wind, I listen. As I look out of my office window now I see the tops of the trees dancing against the backdrop of a dismal, gray sky. Rain is falling. My neighbor’s slender, house-hugging shrubs are swaying, too, and the few leaves left on trees are twisting and turning and spiraling to the earth.

Yet, because I live in a valley in Faribault, in the city, I certainly am not seeing the full power of the wind like my cousin out on the wind-swept prairie some 100 miles away.

My advice to Dawn (who also rode out that July storm in a vehicle) would be this: Do not travel. And, if you must attend your son’s football game tonight, pull on the winter coat, cap and mittens, and anchor yourself to the bleachers.

U.S. Highway 14 slices through the heart of southwestern Minnesota. I wouldn't advise travel if winds reach 60 - 70 mph. I took this photo several years ago during the summer.

READERS, IF YOU have a weather report to share, please submit a comment to Minnesota Prairie Roots. You know how we Minnesotans are—always obsessed with the weather.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling