April 3

Boy was I surprised to come home from western North Dakota to find this!  A spring snow storm in the central part of the state while I had been out shooting a custom motorcycle, enjoying a ride down the road while other parts of the state were tossed back in to winter.

I hadn’t even been able to get home because a large transmission line carrying power to Minnesota and other eastern states had been taken down by the snow and wind, and Highway 83 was blocked.

I should have suspected there was something back home that was not right. When I got to New Salem I could see toothpicks sticking out of the new snow. They were power poles that had been snapped off.

Power was out in many of the towns on the western edge of the storm and for good reason. Those wooden poles could not stand up to the 6 inches of heavy wet snow and 40 mile an hour winds.

I couldn’t get directly home because of the downed power lines, but took a back road route up the Missouri River across the prairie to my home, only to find that the streets had been plowed,  but access to my home was shut off.  I only had to wait a day or two until it all melted.

Such is the short lifespan of spring snow storms in North Dakota.