Star-Journbal Editor
A freakishly powerful and frightening windstorm roared through Hillsboro Friday evening, packing "micro-bursts" possibly as high as 90 miles per hour.
It snapped utility poles, cut power to homes and industries, and knocked countless trees, limbs, and branches to the ground.
For the weekend at least, chain saw owners were the most popular guys in town.
In the aftermath of the storm, neighbors checked on neighbors and breathed a collective sigh of relief that everyone was OK.
Authorities said no one was reported injured and damage to property was relatively light, except for the destruction of three large umbrella-shaped canopies at the new Hillsboro Family Aquatic Center, which cost $3,000 apiece.
Residents were shaken by the ferocity of the howling, straight-line winds that plunged the city into darkness and sent them scrambling for shelter, sometime around 10:20 p.m. Friday.
On Saturday morning, citizens living mostly on the south side of the city were in their yards, cutting fallen branches and counting their losses as they raked up after the storm.
While most people worked at a leisurely pace, volunteers and staff at the Hillsboro Family Aquatic Center raced against the clock to have the new pool ready for its first swim meet, scheduled to begin promptly at 9 o'clock.
Groundskeepers at Tabor College moved quickly to clear fallen trees from the sidewalks, so a reunion group could pass through.
And utility crews at the edge of town worked overtime to restore electrical power to 30 to 40 homes and Hillsboro Industrial Park.
People were trying to make sense of the storm, one of the strongest, and strangest, to hit Hillsboro in some time.
Not since the big lightning storm a few years ago had Jay and Izzie Klassen been as shaken as when the tall Bradford pear tree in their front yard came crashing down.
"We heard the wind hit the side of the house, and were headed to the basement, when we heard a loud cracking sound," she said, attacking a fallen limb with a handsaw.
"We are discouraged, I'll tell you what. This tree shaded this house so nicely. We've had it for 14 years."
Block to block, mostly on the south side of town, downed trees and branches and limbs were everywhere.
On the campus of Tabor College, head groundskeeper Vincent Schroeder sat in an idling skid loader.
He wasn't smiling.
"We've lost so many trees already over here because of the new parking lot coming in, and then we lose one of these right here that actually was left to make the building look nice," Schroeder said.
"To lose that one, that kind of hurts. And we lost some really nice pin oaks on the main campus," he added.
"Some of them were like 100 years old."
When the storm hit the aquatic center, volunteers and staff were busy preparing the pool for Saturday morning's swim meet.
Aquatic center director Jodi Stutzman ordered everyone to take cover in the cinder block bathhouse, just in time.
"It came up so quickly, we just ran for shelter," she said.
Three large shade umbrellas were snapped from heavy aluminum poles. One flew in the pool. The other two were blown over the fence. One blew north across D Street and down Floral, to the backyard of Jim Hefley, at 301 S. Floral, where it was recovered Saturday morning by city administrator Steve Garrett.
The second umbrella flew east from the pool, through the fair grounds, coming to rest against the dugout of Memorial Park, some 300 yards away.
"It's an open weave tarp," Stutzman said. "It's supposed to help the wind go through and it does. Forty mile an hour winds had been fine for it, but not 80."
According Garrett, the umbrellas are insured (under the umbrella of the city's property insurance).
And while there were no parties gong on at the pool at the time of the storm, Garrett is concerned that anyone was caught by surprise.
"They do have one of those weather radios out there for this very thing," Garrett said. "But I don't think there was anyone in the office to hear it. That gives us some room to step back and look at what we need to do about that."
Radio and television reports warned Hillsboro residents of the impending storm, but estimates on how fast the windstorm swept through town varied widely.
Some said the winds might have reached 100 mph, but official records showed top speeds of 60 mph.
But experts said powerful "micro-bursts" of wind would've been too brief in duration to be recorded.
"With a very tall thunderstorm like the one we had, with a down-burst on top of a gust front, you could see 90 mile per hour winds in a very localized area," said Leon Wasinger, a forecaster at the National Weather Service, in Wichita.
"You might even see one side of town have more damage than the other side, especially in these smaller towns."
At the Hillsboro grain elevator, things were returning to normal after a wild night when local wheat farmers had rushed to the elevator with last-minute loads as the thunder rolled.
"We had several cutting all the way through last night, trying to get it cut before the rain moved in," said Lyman Adams, Jr., president of Cooperative Grain and Supply, Inc.
"They all hurried in here when the storm hit and we dumped some trucks in the middle of the storm, so it was kind of a challenge. We didn't know how we were going to dump trucks in that wind. It rattled the building."
According to the clock on the wall, the power went out at 10:20 p.m. Friday at Countryside Feed, Inc., located at Hillsboro Industrial Park.
The clock was right again at 10:20 a.m. Saturday, and feed was being sold the old- fashioned way.
"We're waiting on customers who come in, taking cash and checks and writing it down," said Jeanie Funk, counter sales person. "The phone is dead, the computer is dead.
"It's just crazy."
Loitering in the shadows was a truck driver who'd been there since eight o'clock, waiting for power to be restored so he could unload 53,000 pounds of sodium bicarbonate brought in from Colorado.
South of the dormant feed store, utility crews were planting eight new poles and re-stringing high-voltage lines along a quarter-mile stretch of Industrial Road, north of D Street. Repair workers onsite said it took very strong winds to toothpick-snap the poles.
At the aquatic center, the start of the swim meet was delayed for three hours to allow workers to remove a layer of blown-in dirt from the bottom of the pool.
But by noon the sun was shining on crystal-clear water and the swim meet was in full swing.
And by mid-afternoon, power was restored to the industrial park. The truck driver had dumped his load and was on the road.
At the city tree dump north of town, a green mountain of limbs and branches was piling up. Chain saws could be heard buzzing all around the community.
On the Tabor campus, Schroeder and his crew took a break near a broken stump. There were still hours of work to be done.
"What's interesting is that we spent all day yesterday trimming trees around here," he said, adding, "What a waste of time."
