Bama finally came back today.
Monday’s tornado really spooked some of the folks around
here. It was ironic that we had all been sitting around in the dining hall last
week talking about how the weather can change here so quickly. I told them
about last year’s hail storm that damaged my truck and the couple of funnel
clouds that I had spotted in the distance but never saw touch down.
Tornados are rare in North Dakota and usually only occur
during the few weeks between freezing in late March and sizzling in early June.
The storms are impressive though since you can see forever from atop any hill.
There are about 30 of us in the camp outside Trenton and
when the building season got underway, about 50 Mexicans showed up for the
summer too. The buildings are made of steel with metal roofs and they tend to
amplify the sound of a storm, it sounds a lot like sitting in the loft of a
barn with a tin roof during a heavy rain. The train track is directly across
the highway and there must be 25 or 30 trains a day that come by, sometimes it
sounds like they come right down the hall.
Bama is a short stocky guy from the Mobile area that doesn't own an article of clothing without the Bama football logo on it; he’s seen a
few hurricanes but had never been close to a tornado. Apparently they don’t get
many tornados down in Mexico either because the group sitting next to us got
really interested in what we were discussing, they had all seen the reports of
damage in Joplin and Tuscaloosa the past couple of years. They all knew the
traditional southern description of “it sounded like a freight train” and
hearing Bama talk brought a few laughs from them.
On Monday morning,
just across the state line near Sidney, Montana the storm cell reached an
altitude of about 60,000 feet. That’s big and as it came over us the hail
started to fall in little icy balls about the size of a marble, they steadily
increased to golf ball size as the sky darkened.
It got loud, really loud and just as the black monster cloud
slipped over the ridge to our west, along came a train.
It was all the warning he needed!
Bama is about as wide as the hall and I’m just thankful that
I peeked out the door at all the commotion before stepping into his path. The look
on his face as he headed for the back door was a mix of sheer terror and
determination to get out of this super sized trailer. He never touched a step
when he blew through the door. The last glimpse I caught of him was about half
way up the big hill, he was already gaining on two of the Mexicans ahead of
him.
We’re still down to 48 Mexicans.
