Hail of a storm
Ken Edgington, owner of Bear Dance Orchard, surveys his cherry trees that were hit by a hailstorm Tuesday night in Yellow Bay. Edgington said his trees were overset because of good weather during the spring pollination, “so losing some of the cherries wasn’t all bad.” Most orchards experienced less than 20 percent crop damage, according to Monson Fruit Co., a company that processes fruit from many of the orchards. Chris Jordan photos/Daily Inter Lake
Cherry orchards take a pounding during second day of wild weather
The second hailstorm in two days pounded the east shore of Flathead Lake on Tuesday night, wreaking varying degrees of havoc on cherry orchards.
The storm deposited hail 1 inch in diameter between Woods Bay and Blue Bay, according to reports from the National Weather Service's Weather Forecast Office in Missoula. It also dumped rain on most of the east side of the lake; a man 13 miles south of Bigfork measured nearly half an inch of rain in 10 minutes.
Most orchards had less than 20 percent of crops damaged, said Brian Campbell, field representative for Monson Fruit Co., a Washington-based company that processes fruit for many of the orchards.
"There's a handful that are at the point where they're going to have to assess come harvest time how marketable the crop is," he said. "This is a very small percentage, though."
Ken Edgington was one of the lucky growers; the primary damage to his 600 trees was to the leaves.
Edgington was optimistic that the storm might not have been as devastating as some of his fellow growers feared.
"The cherries are still probably green enough and small enough that it might not have done extreme damage to them," he said. "It obviously knocked some cherries off the trees, but we always get some drop anyway."
The fruit that was hit should be resilient enough to weather the storm's effects, Campell said.
"What most people don't realize is that at this stage of development, the cherry can take a hard hit and have a big ol' ugly bruise on it and even a nick on the skin, and it will overcome it," he said.
Edgington is confident the storm won't devastate this season's crop.
"It's not going to be a disaster, I don't think," he said.
Edgington thinks the storm may benefit the orchards. This year's trees were heavily loaded with cherries, he said; growers would have had to thin them later anyway.
"If it knocked off a few of them, it may have actually helped us out a bit," he said.
Even so, he's not anxious for a repeat performance.
"We certainly don't need another one," he said. "I sure hope Mother Nature doesn't give us another one."
Storms aren't unusual for this time of year, Weather Service meteorologist Corby Dickerson said. June is typically a wet month. What made these storms out of the ordinary was their power.
"These were extraordinarily strong storms, the strongest we've seen in this area for a long time," he said.
They were strong all across western Montana, he said. Hail was nearly 2 inches in diameter near Missoula.
And some areas, particularly in Sanders County between Plains and Ravalli, "were hit two, three, four times in a row," he said.
The good news for western Montana is that the thunderstorms have, for the most part, moved farther east. Showers will continue for the next couple of days, though.
Weather is always part of the gamble, Edgington said.
"That's the game you play," he said. "It's a crapshoot in the cherry business."
Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.