The Winds of Livingston Montana
By Colleen Funk Scharf
I remember the worst wind I have ever seen. It must have been in the early 80’s. Mom and I went to work at the hospital. We were working the 11-7 shift. The wind was really blowing, but like most of us who have lived in Livingston, we went out in the wind just like it was any other wind.
One of the nurses who lived in Bozeman came to work said we were all nuts for going to work. She said they were considered hurricane winds back at her home in Pennsylvania. The next morning trees were down everywhere. That was when they were putting up the new Ford Car building and it came down too.
My mom and I went for a short walk in the fall of 2005. As we were heading home the winds really came up fast and hard. As we were walking by a house we passed a tree and one of its bigger branches came down behind us. We both looked at each other and said we best get home before the next branch came down so we wouldn’t get hit. We stayed in the rest of the night.
I also remember one fall day when my daughter, Janell, was at school and a small dust devil came through the schoolyard at Winans School. Janell was unable to get to the school for safety so she grabbed hold of the leg of the swing-set and the dust devil picked her off the ground for a few seconds, all the while she was hanging on the leg of the swing set for dear life. The wind then let her back down on the ground and she proceeded to walk home. When she walked in I could tell by the look on her face that something had happened. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when she told me, but then the calls from parents started coming through telling me what they saw and if she was okay. Thank God she was.
