Snow ice and hail oh my! Snow ice and hail oh my!
Hey everybody, I'm Tristan Emond with mindful living Realty, a realtor right here in rapid city, South Dakota. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. Talk, everything about moving to rapid city and the wonderful things of rapid city and the black Hills in today's video. We're going to talk about the weather events of rapid city weather events.
Number one. The wind. So apparently the wind is a huge issue for a lot of, you have had a lot of comments, a lot of questions about the wind of South Dakota. So it has its own video stick around to the end. I'll show you share with you where that video is. Weather event. Number two, the snow. Of course we're in the Northern part of the United States.
We get snow here in rapid city and South Dakota. State-wise our state ranks, right? I'm on the 15th of the list, which is about 40 inches per snow annually, depending on which website you look at. Number one of this list vermont with 90 inches of snow every year. And of course the caboose, Florida with 0.01 inches per year, you guys were wanting to get some snow down there.
It's a lot of fun to play with. Now, breaking it down by city, rapid city, we get about 50 inches of snow per year. On average, based on these sites that I've been looking at where Sioux falls is around upper forties. Now the difference though, between rapid city and Sioux falls is that over here in rapid city, we have the banana belt weather.
So we'll get the snow. And then two weeks later it would be 50 degrees. That'll melt. Here comes another round of snow. We'll get a little higher 40 degrees again in the middle of January that all melt. So we don't usually see the same snow that's on the ground. At the beginning of the year as we do in the end of the year, whereas some parts of the Eastern state of South Dakota, that that snow that they have the beginning of the year is on the ground in some fashion the entire year, or it certainly it's a lot colder over there.
So it takes longer to melt. Now there's a big difference when you get into the black Hills, of course, lead South Dakota has 195 inches of steel per year. On average. That's four times what we get in rapid city. He'd be like this beautiful spring-like day in rapid city or Sturgis or Spearfish, you drive up the hill a little bit into the black Hills and it's like a complete winter Wonderland.
The next thing they're talking about in regards to the snow is, as I mentioned before, snow melt, snow melt, and sometimes that melting then freezes at night and we have a deal with ice. Now. Ice can be a lot of fun if you've got a 4-wheel drive pickup truck and you want to spend some doughnuts in some parking lots.
But it certainly makes driving and travel a lot more difficult in our area. Just got to learn how to drive on the roads and take the right precautions at the right time. All right. Sometimes we even have ice storms where rain is coming down and freezing right away and it's collecting ice on everything.
The biggest key issue here of course is trying to get into your car if you have to drive around. And obviously it's not recommended to go driving when you're got an ice storm. But it can also collect on some of the power lines, create so much weight and down the power lines in those areas. Now, I could tell you a few stories about ice and driving from Sioux falls to rapid city, but instead we'll talk to you about the next thing still brings them out and that is blizzards.
Now since we have less humidity, most of the time over here in rapid city, the snow that they get most of the year is lighter. It isn't that wet, heavy snow that you make snowman and snowballs from so many times the accumulation of the snow is as much of the problem is the snow blowing it's blowing across the road, reducing the visibility.
It's bringing drifts along with it. When it blows across the road, creating problems, trying to get from one place to the other. And if you're driving in the snow at night, it looks like star wars space time. But yeah, winter can get long sometimes in March and April when we're ready to just have some spring.
That's when we're getting the two foot of heavy wet snow, those spring snows, they usually melt really quickly afterwards, but sometimes it's just, will you please just stop snowing? Now, it's time for weather event. Number three, the one year, all worried about that would be hail. If there's one weather event that we're known for outside of the snow is hail.
We do have hailstorms, we have them regularly and we have them frequently. So I did all the research to find out, well, how much hail do we have in reference to the rest of the country? So first let's look at the top 10 numbers of hail loss claims in the United States. We're not even in the top 10.
However, let's flip to this one, which is the major hail in 2020. There we are. Number one on the list. And then the top 10 hail claim frequencies were number one, again, followed right behind Nebraska. And 2020 was a weird year for hail. We had like four major events before July 1st even. 2020 was the first time that we submitted a hail claim for our house, where we had some exterior broken windows.
We had some damaged siding. We had the roof and the gutters that all need to be replaced. Even our metal siding on our back garage needed to be replaced as well for some cosmetic damage. That was some crazy hail to it. Totaled out two of our cars. If you look at this side right here, you can see that no matter where you are on the black Hills, we had substantial hail in 2020.
Now, usually even though hail storms can come up relatively fast, usually, you know, they're coming. They usually come after a hot day. In the later afternoon and you can kind of see it off of the distance and you can kind of feel that "Uh-oh, something's coming", that usually gives you time to make the plans get protected.
But Hey, when you've got an afternoon hailstorms that comes through and you're at work and your car's outside, cause that's where you park it. Sometimes there's not a lot that you can do, but generally we see enough warning so that we know something is coming. A lot of times you can get a feel for the whole weather pattern and just get a feel for, Hey, they'll probably have another afternoon thunderstorm.
Cause that's the way things are going. And I want to be protected just in case it happens to turn into a hailstorm. So the answer really is just simply being aware of what's happening around you, what the weather's doing and having good insurance. In our area you want to make sure that you have a deductible low enough to cover the hail damage that was bound to happen.
Having a deductible of four or five, $6,000 is really not a deductible at all. When you're going to replace your roof. Before the end of its expected lifetime, you can probably expect to replace yourself at least once every 10 years due to hail damage. The other thing to do is make sure that you ask questions about your insurance.
Sometimes your insurance doesn't cover cosmetic damage on your metal surfaces. So if you've got a metal garage that gets beat up by hail. And it's just all kinds of cosmetic, some insurance companies won't replace that. So make sure you've asked your questions about what is covered and what is not covered in your hail insurance.
Now, what about your cars? Again, the answer there is have some pretty, the insurance makes sure we have the comprehensive insurance to cover your car in the event of a head claim that if you don't have a garage or a carport or a way to protect your vehicle, the other thing to keep in mind, especially when you're buying a vehicle is the gap.
The difference in payment between what you can buy a car for. And what insurance gives you for the car. You know, it's kind of one of those, it depreciates it because you drive it off the lot. We bought a 2014 Kia forte for the children because they had a lot of cool gadgets and they really liked it. And we were, we're kind of P the people that buy car and driver forever.
Well in 2020, yeah. It got totaled and totaled pretty easily actually, because the value of that car didn't hold over time. The Nissan center that we had. Actually, we got a better deal for that. Got total. But we were able to replace that easy enough, where we kind of lost a few bucks on the Kia when we went to replace that one after the insurance claim came through.
So long story short, know what's going to happen. Be aware of the weather patterns and surroundings and Hey, get some good insurance. Weather event, number four, tornadoes. Now here in the rapid city, black Hills area. We don't see a lot of tornadoes actually touching down. They'll usually go north or they'll come back around the black Hills.
It just kind of skips over the black Hills. Now that being said, we did have a weird landing of in Spearfish canyon last year. I believe of a tornado. And then I remember a long time ago, we lived in north side rabbit city, so a little bit more closer to the Plains. And we were there on, in our basement watching video with some friends and we knew that there was a tornado warning, but we didn't.
Thinking anything about it afterwards, we go outside and there's that feeling of, you know, just after the storm feeling. And there's a few rough shingles everywhere. So that probably got a little close. I don't know if he actually touched down or not. Now when I grew up in Tyler, Minnesota, Tyler, actually our tornado that took out the town at one point.
So I remember being in school, always having the tornado drill and our tornado was a big thing. Well, not so much over here, you got most places. You'll have a basement. If not, you probably have a tub and chances are the tornado is not going to be a very big deal. Now as you go north and east rapid city, that's what Trinity has happened a little more frequently as they pop over the black Hills and pop it to the Plains.
But rapid city, not so much event number five, fire now I realize that fire isn't a direct weather event, but since we live. At the gateway to the black Hills national forest, where 75% of the forest fires that have started have been lightening related, it seemed like it would be a great time to talk about fires in the area.
Now the fire season over here, it goes from about may to October. Once the weather starts getting warm enough. And a lot of it depends upon how dry the year is. So previous years we've had very wet years. This past year, it's been a little dry. We've already had a couple of fires this year because we've had a little bit less snow, a little bit less weather.
So it's been a drier year. So, you know, those signs of the black Hills national forest talks about the fire danger. Yeah, they've been a little bit closer to this way lately now because the black Hills national forest is part wilderness area park tourist playground with campfires and park. Full-time homeowners.
There's certainly plenty of potential for fires within our area. And if you do own a home in the black Hills, things such as fire defensibility, cutting down of trees to make sure you have defensible space and things like this. All affect you and your homeowner's insurance. Now, according to the black Hills national forest website, over the past 30 years, they've been tracking forest fires there.
Actually. What about an average amount of 99 forsest fires a year. Which actually surprised me. I didn't realize that there were that many there's also where I talked about 75% of them were lightening related and majority of them were the south side of the Hills where the more of the wilderness areas are located.
That being said. Just a few months ago, we had the shorter fire, which is just up Nima real we're actually just beyond my office here. There was a fire that started in a residential neighborhood that burned a lot of acres and got even close to rapid city where you could see the fire from Canyon lake park.
Now the firefighters did an amazing job that protected all the homes. I think only one. Home. And a couple of outbuildings were lost that whole procedure. They made sure they evacuations were done on time. Nobody's lives were lost and everything was done really, really well, but it was over previously burned.
Fire Actually got to the same neighborhood in 1988, so it didn't have as many trees to climb up and crown across the roads and get into anywhere new that way. So if you're looking for that home in a black hill, surrounded by trees, or even with a view, fire is certainly reality, but it's something that the national forest looks out for watches out for,
and does a very good job protecting private property in that scenario. Okay. Number six, floods and water, right? The Creek runs all the way through rabbit city, which comes from Pactola reservoir up in the black Hills, hover in 1972, 15 inches of water fell in six hours. And that was up by Nemo, which is this side of the reservoir.
So waters came flowing through down rapid Creek and we'll rapid a Creek, runs into canyon lake, a lot of debris clerked it other way. And at the Canyon laek spillway, all that debris caught. Causing water to just rush over and flood through downtown rapid city and destroying homes along the way, which is why
now you find a lot of green space and park along rapid Creek. This was a unique event, but it was considered a 500 year flood. So they've made a lot of adjustments to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Now, now a number of water levels stations along rapid Creek between pack toll and rapid city to measure the water level.
So we know. What to expect. They've also done a lot of work, even in recent years to make sure that the water has places to go in drainage and ditches along those green spaces and in the parks along rapid Creek, since then, we haven't had a significant flood that caused damage quite like that. However, we do have cyclical years.
Like I mentioned before, sometimes we have dry years. Sometimes we have wet years now on these really, really wet years, like 2019, it seemed like it was raining nonstop from. May to June, we had the saturation of the ground, all the basements, rapid city, they were tested really good in 2019. If there was good drainage, you wouldn't have water in your basement.
If not, you're probably dealing with it. On the plus side of that from realtors perspective, if there was any water damage in the basement, but in 2019, it's by now been adequately disclosed or properly fixed. And we also know that if there was no water damage in 2019, there probably isn't going to be any.
Rapid city also has flood zones. So make sure you know where you're buying your property, particularly along rapid Creek, kind of in rapid valley and even the Southeast side of town. There's some, some areas that are flood zones also on these flood zones, as we'll learn in 2018, there's also potential for, or some flash flooding.
When the ground gets saturated, the rain comes down and you comes to the water, just kind of fills up and floods the road a little bit. Now, maybe you're already saying, dude, why does anybody live there? That's ridiculous. And since I've always lived in the north, I don't know any different. And sometimes I'm like, why do we live here now, once you get, I feel for the weather patterns, you have an understanding of when to go out, when not to go out, when things are going to hit, how to drive on all these roads, it really doesn't become that big of a deal once you really get a feel for it.
And it gets an experience in driving around and understanding, like I mentioned, how those weather patterns work. We ain't got no hurricanes. We ain't got no big bugs. We ain't got no Gators and in April, like it is right now, it's 60 degrees, not 90. And as I mentioned, the top of the video, here's the video about wind.
Don't forget, check out my overall video about the weather in our area as well. Thanks everyone for watching. Have an amazing day to remember love where you live .