SPECIAL WEATHER EVENT: Friday, 01 July 2011 5:00 P.M.. Well, almost. Early Friday morning the TV weather folks had no mention of rain. All week dry weather plagued us, grass was turning brown. The hope of rain was waning.

Around 4:00 P.M. clouds and very high humidity signaled that rain was a strong possibility. Now, the weather maps declared the possibility of strong thunder storms in Central MN. The possibility became a reality around 5:00 P.M.. Constant thunder spelled trouble.

The answer came twenty minutes later when the sky, now really dark started dropping rain and Skywarn called us (Jan and I are weather spotters) to full alert. Wind was, I would guess, about 50 mph. Looking out our picture window that faces south down the length of Little Rock Lake, Jan and I could see a wall of rain. Would this storm miss us and head NE? No. As storms go, it was just another strong storm. We did get a lot of rain though.

Skywarn called at 8:00 P.M. telling us the storm had ended. (Rain had stopped here an hour earlier) The storm dumped 1.8" of rain here and a small amount of pea sized hail fell. Only about an inch of rain fell in St. Cloud while select areas received more than two inches. A tornado was spotted near St. Cloud and more than 30,000 area residents were without electricity. Some trees were down and only a couple of minor injuries were reported.

With thirty more days of July to go, what will come next?