Hail of a storm — Pea-sized ice chunks a surprise for drivers, golfers

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

When Michael Gangloff bought his Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle in April and took a riding class at the Kenai Peninsula Harley-Davidson store, it prepared him for just about anything the road might throw at him.

Pea-sized hail in September was a surprise, though.

Gangloff was riding home to Sterling from Homer around 4:45 p.m. Friday when a storm front passed over Sterling, spewing torrential rain, pea-sized chunks of ice and thunder and lightning over the Sterling Highway.

The storm didn’t reach downtown Soldotna, but the massive black cloud marring the otherwise sunny fall afternoon sky could be seen from miles away. Even so, Gangloff wasn’t expecting what he was driving into.

“It just started hailing. About a mile up it wasn’t doing this,” Gangloff said.

The weather had been nice all the way up from Homer on Friday. Even when he reached the edge of the storm near the Soldotna Animal Hospital, he didn’t think it would do more than make a soggy ending to an otherwise pleasant ride.

“I didn’t think it would be too bad at first. I thought it was just rain, but it started bouncing up on the road,” he said. “I had my visor open. It was stinging the face pretty good.”

Traffic was picking up at the early end of the workday commute as the rain deluge started reducing visibility. When the hail started rattling car roofs and ricocheting off windshields, vehicles pulled off onto the road shoulder, into parking lots and on side streets to get off the highway.

“When it started I slowed way down. I was probably doing only about 30,” Gangloff said.
The Harley-Davidson store where he bought the bike was in sight, so he pulled under the awning covering the front door and went in for a cup of coffee to wait out the storm before riding the remaining 12 or so miles to his home on Feuding Lane.

“It started getting pretty thick on the road,” he said. “I think it’s going to be pretty slick for a while. I might have to drive with the emergency lights on on the side of the road.”
Gangloff has only been riding since May, so this summer has entailed a lot of firsts for him on his bike. He didn’t think riding through a hailstorm would be one of them.

“I sure didn’t think this was going to happen today. I was actually planning to go to Anchorage tomorrow. It sure don’t seem like it now,” he said.

He said the instructors of the riders safety course he took when he bought the bike covered what to do in inclement weather, even if they didn’t mention hail, specifically.
“More or less,” he said. “Just get out of it.”

Rita Geller and her son, Dan Geller, followed that advice at Birch Ridge Golf Course. They were on the fourth hole when the hailstorm hit.

“We were gonna try and sit it out until we saw lightning,” said Rita Geller, who works in the pro shop at Birch Ridge.

They thought better of walking around an open expanse with metal sticks and took cover in their golf cart. Even under shelter the right side of Rita’s pants still got soaked.

“The cart was fishtailing when we were driving back. It was pretty icy in the fairways,” Rita said.

After 20 minutes the storm passed and the sun was once again peeking out from the clouds, illuminating the greens that now looked like they were covered with a blanket of Styrofoam.

“We tried to putt on the green, but it was too bumpy,” Dan Geller said.

Rita said she only gets her son out to play about three times a year, and put the blame for cutting this game short squarely on her son.

“I was complaining about the heat earlier,” Dan said.

“Yeah, you did it. It was your fault,” Rita said.

Actually, a mix of sunlight and cold was to blame. David Vonderheide, a meteorological technician with the National Weather Service’s forecast office in Anchorage, said a lack of wind, a layer of cool air up above and afternoon sunlight warming moist air down near the ground created air instability.

As the sun warmed moist air near the ground an updraft was created, sucking the moisture up to the layer of freezing cold air above. Big, puffy clouds form, and the moisture freezes into ice pellets. If the updraft is strong enough, the ice is held aloft and collects more moisture, turning into bigger and bigger chunks of ice. When the ice becomes too heavy for the updraft to keep aloft, or if the ice shifts too far from the updraft, it falls back to the ground as hail.

“Gravity takes over and they all just spill out,” Vonderheide said.
He said pea-sized hail would take updraft wind speeds of 30 to 40 miles per hour to form. Some hailstorms can have 80- to 100-mph wind speeds, which can result in chunks of hail as big as grapefruits.

Anchorage has also seen some hail showers in the last few weeks, Vonderheide said.

“It is a little unusual. Usually you get weather like that during May and June,” he said.

Vonderheide chalked it up to the changing of the seasons, since equinox was Monday.
That means winter is not far away. The Kenai Municipal Airport recorded a low of 37 degrees Sunday night, while the Soldotna Airport dipped down to 34 degrees.

“It was kind of a close call this morning for people who forgot to take their plants in,” Vonderheide said Monday. “Probably just a few places got maybe an hour or two of frost. The first real general, regular frost will be coming within the next two weeks, I think.”

Sign of the times? Campaign propaganda disappears from central peninsula yards, roadsides

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Political signs have it rough. In the course of one election season the red-white-and-blue signs that sprout up overnight along major roads, busy intersections and in supporters’ yards take a lot of abuse.

They’re shot, stabbed, shredded by razors, graffitied and burned. Run over by four-wheelers, dirt bikes, cars and trucks, wildlife and the occasional piece of farm equipment. This year on the central Kenai Peninsula, they’re being stolen altogether.

Several signs promoting Democratic candidates for state and national offices have gone missing this month. Mary Toutonghi, who lives on SoHi Lane in Soldotna, has had problems with her yard signs being knocked over periodically in the two months or so she’s had them out. Then on Sept. 9 she woke up to find a sign for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and one for Democratic U.S. House of Representatives candidate Ethan Berkowitz were gone altogether.

“To me it’s a cowardly act because there’s no discussion or anything, and I see it as an act of vandalism, really,” Toutonghi said.

A Soldotna resident since 1984, Toutonghi has displayed signs for candidates she’s supported for “years and years,” she said. They’ve been knocked down before but never outright stolen.

She related the act to an incident in 2003, when people participating in a peace demonstration at Soldotna Creek Park along the Sterling Highway were doused with water by a man in a truck.

“To me it’s not a democratic form, it is a cowardly form,” she said.

Toutonghi said she reported the theft to Soldotna police, but without any witnesses she doesn’t expect anyone to be held accountable.

“It’s my yard, I put up my signs and they tear them down instead of going the route of putting up their own signs. Or maybe they do have their own signs, but to me it’s a violation of what I choose to display in my yard,” she said.

Toutonghi’s political beliefs are strong enough for her to promote them visually, but she draws the line at interfering in what others believe.

“I do feel they have a right to their own opinions,” she said. “There are times when there are discussions and there is agreement, and if there is serious disagreement I let it go. I feel I don’t have any more right to push on people than they have to push on me.”

Julie Hasquet, with the Mark Begich for U.S. Senate campaign in Anchorage, said on Friday that she had heard of a rash of sign stealing on the central peninsula. Begich, a Democrat, is running against incumbent Republican Ted Stevens.

“It appears at this point this is pretty exclusive to your area. There have been reports of Begich signs taken down there, and larger numbers than normal,” Hasquet said.

She said people have reported seeing someone in a white Suburban taking signs.

“We think it’s very unfortunate people try to curb others’ right to free speech, and it’s illegal to take down those signs,” she said.

Nathan Osburn, the Alaska deputy communications director for the Obama for America campaign, said he’d also heard of signs in the Soldotna area going missing, but didn’t know if it was more than was usual in an election season.

“I think people tend to get very passionate about their candidates and sometimes express themselves in inappropriate ways,” Osburn said.

With the Berkowitz campaign, press secretary David Shurtleff hadn’t heard of sign thefts this year, but wouldn’t consider it unusual if there were.

“It’s always disappointing but never surprising to hear about it,” Shurtleff said. “Hopefully they’re taking them and putting them on eBay, but they’re probably going in a bonfire. It happens every year and it’s always disappointing. That being said, if somebody gets their sign stolen or already has and they want another one, we’ll keep giving them until we don’t have any more.”

Representatives for Begich and Berkowitz said their candidates have been treated respectfully when visiting the central peninsula.

With the Ted Stevens re-election campaign, Jane and Will Madison, of Soldotna, are co-chairs of a local steering committee responsible for putting up Stevens signs on the peninsula. As of Friday, 50 4-by-8-foot signs and another 50 yard signs supporting Stevens had been put up on the peninsula, and Jane Madison said they hope to put up another 50 signs in the coming week. She said she hasn’t heard of a single sign being stolen.

Tim Evans, a Democrat running for the state House District 34 seat, covering the northwestern Kenai Peninsula outside the Kenai, Soldotna and Kalifornsky-Beach Road areas, hasn’t been as lucky.

Six of his signs were stolen from the Sterling Highway in Sterling about a week ago.
“Across from the post office they left two other political signs, so I felt it was pretty well-targeted,” Evans said.

He said a vehicle with two men was seen taking the signs. He reported it to Alaska State Troopers, and they were nice about it, but he doesn’t expect anything to be done, he said.

“You just never know. You don’t want to point a finger at your opponent because that’s probably way beneath him. It was probably just over-exuberant kids or whatever, or even some over-exuberant adults. I don’t even want to point the finger at kids.”

Mike Chenault, a Republican, is the District 34 incumbent. He said his signs haven’t seen any more abuse than normal, although the one act of vandalism he does know of was unusual for the amount of effort put into it.

“A couple of road signs somebody took off my frames,” he said. “They actually unscrewed them. That took some time. They took the sandbags and the signs and left the frame.”

In Chenault’s experience, sign vandalism varies from year to year. Some years none of his signs are messed with, other years he’s had eight or 10 disappear. He’s had signs shot, run over and slashed with a razor knife.

“I don’t mess with other people’s signs.,” he said. “Sometimes kids will get playing around or even adults will think it’s cute to go do some things.”

The cost can add up in a hurry, he said.

David Hartman, an employee with G.F. Sherman Signs on K-Beach, said yard signs cost $350 for 25 or $540 for 100. For 4-by-4-foot signs, it’s $582 for 10 or $726 for 25. For 4-by-8-foot signs, it’s $822 for 10 or $1,134 for 25.

In the state Senate District Q race, Republican incumbent Tom Wagoner said he hasn’t had any unusual trouble with his signs. He hasn’t put many out this year, though.

“People get pretty passionate this time of the election, and sometimes people just don’t like all the signs,” he said. “I don’t like signs, but here on the peninsula they’re kind of a necessary evil when you’re running for office. It’s an inexpensive way to get your name out on the peninsula.”

Kelly Wolf, running as a nonpartisan for House District 33, covering the Kenai-Soldotna-K-Beach area, said he’s careful about where he puts his signs, because he knows what can happen if they end up in the wrong place.

“If they’re disappearing if they’re in the road right of way I don’t know if the (Department of Transportation) sign Nazis are down here or not,” he said. “They’re a real factor. Most everybody running for office is supposed to be aware of regulations from DOT sign police. If it’s in that right of way they will remove it, and they do have the ability to fine.”

Wolf said he hasn’t had any problems with his signs, other than one being knocked down. It was on a dirt path so it may have been the wind, or perhaps a dirt bike or four-wheeler, he said.

“Sometimes adults act more childish than children themselves. Sometimes you have to figure out who’s more mature,” he said.

Dick Waisanen is a first-time candidate, a Democrat running for the District 33 seat. He’s had one sign run over by a four-wheeler in a field along the Kenai Spur Highway by Sport Lake Road. His and one of Evans’ signs were flattened, but Evans’ stake didn’t break so Waisanen put it back up for him. That’s the kind of thing he expected to deal with, not outright theft.

“As far as signs go, we have freedom of speech. As a candidate, you still need to respect the property of whoever’s got the sign up there,” he said. “I’m surprised we had so much of it. You have to maintain them, the wind knocks them down or different things happen. But breaking them or cutting them up or stealing them is a step too far for what we would say for the spirit of America.”

Editor’s note: Senate District Q Democrat candidate Dr. Nels Anderson and House District 33 Republican incumbent Kurt Olson did not return a call seeking comment.