Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters

Stories from survivors of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness’s epochal weather disaster

On July 4, 1999, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in the region’s history. Originating over the Dakotas, the midsummer windstorm developed amid unusually high heat and water-saturated forests and moved steadily east, bearing down on Fargo, North Dakota, and damaging land as it crossed the Min...