MORGANTOWN – Whoa, hold your horses.
Judy Dalton Sauerborn is used to persnickety weather – especially from the storms that brew in the high climes over the area of Scott Avenue, before galloping across the ridges and dips to her place on Cobun Creek Road.
She co-owns and operates J&J Farms and Dalton Stables there, the family business her parents, Jean and Jim, started in 1963 when she was a teenager.
Today, the 81-year-old still begins her workday before the sun does its.
Judy’s out and about by 4:30 a.m. and only stops briefly to put up her feet and have a cup of tea when the other Judy – Judge Judy – is on TV.
“My favorite show,” she said. “It used to be on at 4. Now, whatever time it’s on is my break.”
All that weathering aside, she still didn’t like the show over the skies which was layering and building in the afternoon of this past Saturday, the Fourth of July.
The wind kicked up, then began making like a rambunctious colt, she said.
Meteorological fireworks she could have done without, she said.
It knocked down trees, including a giant maple with stories to tell.
It ripped the heavy, expensive awning off her porch, where she had been sitting leisurely some 20 minutes before.
“I must have a guardian angel,” she said.
The structures of the dog kennels there were slammed and cracked in the onslaught, making her worry for the fate of “Cowgirl,” a 7-month-old German Shepherd puppy and newest resident.
“I was afraid I was going to get there and find her dead,” Judy recounted, “but the little girl was fine.”
RED, WHITE … AND RAIN
Breakouts of isolated thunderstorms that holiday carried high winds, which felled trees and powerlines across north-central West Virginia, including Monongalia County.
Across Morgantown, Green Bag Road and Kingwood Pike both got a share, with their roads being closed for a time while crews began the clean-up work.
“I thought it was a tornado,” Judy said, and while there were no confirmed reports that day, she wasn’t blowing smoke, in her wondering of it all, Chris Leonardi reports.
Tornadic activity is picking up across the region, said Leonardi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh.
Pin that on climate change – plus advances in radar and other detection technology – he told The Dominion Post last week.
For example, he said, the infamous “Tornado Alley” of Kansas and Oklahoma is shifting a bit to the upper Midwest these days, based in part on ever-warming temperatures.
And ever-changing technology, as he said, is making it easier for meteorologists to determine a tornado over, say, an intense storm with straight-line winds.
“We know a lot more than we did,” he said.
Leonardi and colleagues rank tornadoes on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which uses wind speeds to grade their severity.
On said scale, zero is the weakest and 5 carries the strongest winds and most damage.
Late last month, a EF-O funnel with winds around 95 mph touched down briefly on Bunner’s Ridge in outlying Marion County, snapping tree branches, but leaving homes and roofs intact.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
Judy, meanwhile, likes the intact nature and security of her life on Cobun Creek. She grew up there.
She’s been riding horses since she was 5 and got that pony she asked for — and she was still winning trophies on the barrel-racing circuit as a 40-year-old in the 1980s.
For decades, the family business was known for its charity rides that raised thousands of dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Jim, the patriarch, died in 1996. Jean joined her husband in 2018.
Cobun Creek, for generations, was the epicenter of family life and love.
Still is.
Judy and that still-intact family, including her granddaughter, are why.
There are 24 horses to tend to, plus other livestock. There’s Cowgirl – smart, playful and watchful, in the way of her German Shepherd breed.
And, there’s Judy, still working the stables and the land, even as she is getting over the annoyances of Lyme Disease, which she contracted a couple of summers ago.
Now, she’s waiting for her insurance adjuster to touch down.
“Yeah,” she said drolly. “Should be interesting.”
Don’t forget the weather report, she said.
The National Weather Service is calling for a high of 83 today, with the possibility of scattered showers and thunderstorms carrying into the weekend.
