On Saturday, December 13th, the storm that had moved toward the Flathead all week hit. We didn't get as much snow as I had hoped... But the temperatures plummeted deep into the negatives with wind gusts knocking on 40-miles-per-hour.
Winds peeled off the roof of one of the labs at the Flathead Lake Biological Station. 
Another tree uprooted right at the front door of one of the summertime cabins. It fell over, and precisely in between two cabins - leaving both unscathed.
So many of these giant trees were uprooted, with these big, gouged out craters underneath.
The weirdest thing is that Bigfork was fine, cold, but fine. I'm so glad we got the insulation installed before this cold snap! It's been good hot-chocolate-sitting-in-front-of-the-fire time!
Below is the script for the story I wrote for NPR. I tried to upload the sound, but no luck! You can go to the MT Public Radio Website, and follow the news links to find yesterday's archived broadcast if you want to.
LAST WEEKEND’S SEVERE WINDS ALONG THE EAST SHORE OF FLATHEAD LAKE BLEW DOWN HUNDREDS OF TREES, INCLUDING ON THAT KILLED A DRIVER ON HIGHWAY 35.
THE BLOW-DOWN HAS COMPLETELY ALTERED THE LANDSCAPE OF THE FLATHEAD LAKE BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH STATION.
400-YEAR-OLD PONDEROSA, DOUGLAS AND GRAND FIRS WERE UPROOTED, AND A ROOF WAS PEELED OFF ONE OF THE STATIONS LABS.
BUT MIRACULOUSLY, FEW OF THE STATIONS BUILDINGS WERE SEVERELY DAMAGED.
FLATHEAD REPORTER KATRIN FRYE SURVEYED THE DAMAGE WITH THE STATION’S DIRECTOR, DR. JACK STANFORD.
SCRIPT:
NAT OPEN – Crunching through the woods
JACK STANFORD: “Now we’re going into the blast zone…. trees down everywhere.”
Dr. Jack Stanford hikes through the 80-acres of the Flathead Lake Biological Station, surveying the destruction Saturday’s storm wreaked on the landscape.
It looks like the area was bombed – trees down, uprooted with big craters in the ground where they once stood.
Dr. Stanford lives at the Biological station. He heard the trees getting knocked down by the wind before the sun rose on Saturday.
STANFORD – “It was just crash after crash after crash.” Crash.wav :04
Trees fell, blocking the drive into the station. Caretaker Eric Anderson who volunteers with the Finley Point Fire Department was heading out to help firefighters with a car crushed by a tree on the highway.
Anderson had to saw his way out, and when he came back, Maintenance Supervisor Mark Potter and Dr. Stanford were cutting through more felled trees.
STANFORD – We got the road open so we could get the fire truck back in and then we looked up the road and the whole thing fell apart. Trees were coming down like dominos. And, we noticed that the wind had increased quite a bit, and that’s when most of the damage happened.” Damage.wav :19
Dr. Stanford is the director of the Flathead Lake Biological Station. The station is an ecological research and education branch of the University of Montana that studies freshwater ecology in the “Crown of the Continent”.
It was created in 1899 – the first building erected on the property now serves as a museum. In Saturday’s storm a tree crashed down, crushing the porch, but leaving the rest of the museum unscathed.
The Biological Station saw many near misses during the storm. Most of the property is heavily wooded, and lines of cabins on the hillside sloping down to Flathead Lake are interspersed with trees.
At one spot a tree uprooted at the cabins front stoop, and fell directly between the cabin and its neighbor, and farther down a giant Ponderosa Pine completely uprooted, and a pine going back hundreds of years, and about 100-feet high crashed into the lake.
STANFORD – “This one here is really sad because the students have sat under it and studied under it and leaned against it for many many years, the whole history of the station probably. And you can see, it’s another one of these meter-plus diameter Ponderosa Pines and it’s fallen clear out into the lake and the amount of soil that the root wad kicked over… could fill a dump truck with it.” Stanford Sad.wav :30
The craters under the upturned root-wads are dry, dusty, and cold. Some of the trees were dead standing, or rotten in the middle or on the roots. These the staff at the biological station weren’t surprised to loose.
However, Dr. Stanford points out others which were green.
STANFORD – Again, perfectly healthy trees, both of them but just no moisture in the ground at all. You can see it’s just powder dry. I saw them fall over and a big puff of dust would go up in the air from the root wad throwing it up in the air.” Dust.wav :16
Dr. Stanford came to the station in Yellow Bay in 1971, and says he’s never seen so many trees wiped out by winds.
STANFORD – “I remember the storm in 1988, when it killed all the cherry trees. It was the same sort of storm except that the wind this time was more out of the east. And that one had more of a northerly – wind out of the north. And, while that one blew a tree or two down, it didn’t do this kind of damage.” 1988.wav :31
Dr. Stanford says they hope to use some of the felled trees to rebuild. They’ll have someone come in to help figure out how best to use the timber, and get the ground replanted.
Dr. Stanford points out an eagles nest perched high in a Ponderosa on the edge of what once was a thickly treed area, and now is nearly open space with trees uprooted and piled on each other.
STANFORD – “Now you can see the eagles nest up in the tree. So it didn’t even blow the eagles nest out of the tree, yet it blew these big trees over. I guess that says something about an eagles ability to build it’s nest.” Eagles Nest.wav :14
Driving away from the biological station the ditches along highway 35 are filled with debris. You could hear chainsaws operating in the distance as crews worked to clear trees and make the power lines safe.
From Yellow Bay north the cherry orchards the east shore of Flathead Lake is famous for have farmhouses with trees more than double their height blown down. The cherry trees weathered the storm well.
At the northern and southern ends of the lake, Polson and Bigfork fared well- frigid temperatures, but nowhere near the gusts of wind that hammered the Eastern Shore.
