MPR’s Gary Eichten speaks with a central Minnesotan farmer who recounts his experience of 9-inch rainfall and being humbled by the wrath of nature.
The widespread and drenching rain on September 7, 1991, produced a total of up to 11 inches near Glencoe, with 6 inches or more in another swath extending from Paynesville, northwestward to Glenwood and Hoffman.
SPEAKER 1: It looked like snow. It almost made you think of. You were in the midst of a snowstorm. Just kind of came in sheets and waves and. And it just kept on. Now, Broughton, I'm just two miles South of that. They got in a little twister there, and there are some trees and things like that good sized trees that went down. Right at my place, we got wind, but it wasn't any twisting type effect. But the town of Broughton got into it, at least a portion of it.
SPEAKER 2: How long did it continue at that rate?
SPEAKER 1: Well, it kept on, I would say the first wave came from about four to six, maybe into that time span. And then we had the Radio on. And we heard how Hector had gotten 7 inches. And I thought, well, we're lucky we just got four. We had about 4 up to that point. But then the second wave came, and by the time we ended up, then by about 8:00, 9:00 o'clock that night, we had the full nine.
SPEAKER 2: What happens when 9 inches of rain actually falls?
SPEAKER 1: Our land here is very flat. We don't have any hills or anything like that. And a lot of it is tiled. And so we have tiles and the tiles of course, were not nearly big enough to take anything like that. And when I-- in fact, yesterday I was driving around. And I happened to come by one of my fields and it was standing in water up to the ears and that's deep. It's not little short, chubby corn. Corn is good size this year. And that's a couple feet of water standing in these areas where the tiles just absolutely can't take it. They aren't nearly big enough for anything like that.
SPEAKER 2: Well, I would think this would really cause some problems now trying to get your crop harvested, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER 1: Yes, it would. I'm not a dairy farmer, but the dairy people here are right at the peak of silo filling time. And I don't know how those people are ever going to get any of that because it's going to take days now before we'll even get close to a field.
SPEAKER 2: Yeah. Really, really does remind you of the power of nature, doesn't it?
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, it does. You get pretty small when you start thinking about some of these things. You finally realize that all the things we can do and all the mechanical things we have. But it all gets pretty small when you start really realizing how things, what things can happen. As far as nature is concerned, this was a lot of water. I mean, this was so much water that it's going to take a long time for it to actually drain.
And the subsoil, like I said, it was so full to start with. So it wasn't a situation where the first couple of inches soaked away. I mean, our ground is full before it came. So many times, we will get a system where the system will come through and you get the initial blast and then it's over and then it seems like things kind of straighten out. But this just kept on and on and on and on. And, you just wondered what was happening. And it just made you feel spooky because it just didn't give up.
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