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'Omen in Magenta: Roseau County Minnesota Storm Clouds June 10, 2002'

  Storm clouds entering Roseau County on June 10, 2002 preceding the county-wide flood of June 11. 

 

   On January 14, 2026, I found the above image buried away in a file cabinet. I had completely forgotten it and even now as I reexamine it wonder where I was when I took it. As old images often do, they can enable one to remember at least what we think happened, (before AI & Photoshop, etc) as photographic fact. And whereas, I can't recall the immediate hours following this image, I can recall to some degree of accuracy, how the flood affected me personally some of the days because I took many many pictures and published a good number of them in our magazine, THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota's Original Art, History, & Humor Journal, 1994-2018. The flood issue being Volume 7 Issue 1A.
 
Unknown to me at the time, if but briefly before Joe McDonnell called me to meet them in Wannaska to help sandbag around the church, threatened as it was by flood waters of the South Fork of the Roseau River; I was busy looking at what was happening on Mikinaak Creek which has its confluence with the river three miles south and a mile west of Wannaska.
 
I wish we had this level of water on Mikinaak Creek the year around, as my daughter and I awoke to on June 11, 2002. It rose to stretch approximately 150 yards across (to the left of the house) and about 25-feet from our house, a point that has been marked since with a bird feeder on a post.


 
My daughter and I followed the McDonnells into Roseau after sandbagging in Wannaska. Hundreds of people were there, working filling sandbags by the Roseau post Office. 


   I had luckily purchased a 1986 Toyota 4x4 pickup in May that sat higher than most automobiles so we drove that through some of the flooding streets of Roseau. I finished sandbagging for the day and started checking out the extent of the flood from Warroad to Palen, criss-crossing and reversing and going miles around flooded areas, taking pictures, writing notes. I went home and printed up a couple hundred of these posters, distributing them wherever I could.

I quickly learned that approaches to bridges were often washed out, although the bridges looked stable: NEVER ATTEMPT IT IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE. 

 

An approach on Roseau County 9,  June of 2002

 

A submerged car off of Roseau County Road 5.

Also, downstream sides of partially flooded gravel roads wash out pretty fast. One side of the road looks firm but you can't see what's under the flowing water past center. 

With the accumulation of tons of photographs, we published THE RAVEN's Volume 7 Issue 1A, ROSEAU COUNTY FLOOD JOURNAL NO. 1 (There was never issue No. 2, per what became  tradition.) THE RAVEN can maybe be found in the collections of over 50 libraries in Minnesota and almost as many historical societies, absolutely including the Minnesota Historical Society, perhaps serial collection, starting back in 1994.

 



Amazing what the rediscovery of an old photo will do.

Comments

Joe - Wednesday's Child said…
Do you remember what direction you were facing when you took Omen in Magenta?
January 17, 2026 at 9:28 AM
WannaskaWriter said…
I think I was looking was south. I've studied the tree line in the distance and they appear to be the hybrid cottonwoods we planted in 1981. There's a faint glow of sunset on the horizon that could've struck the upper altitude storm clouds like that, giving them a rosy glow gloved with such black threatening appearance. I understood that Skime area got between 8-9 inches of rain that night, flooding the south fork of the Roseau River and all those smaller rivers & creeks throughout the forest and Hayes Lake, spreading cross-country, eventually Mikinaak Creek and piling into the flooded Roseau River basin at Roseau and the over-capacity Roseau Lake into Sprague. Yeah, I think that cloud was pushing WNW from there.
January 17, 2026 at 7:32 PM
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