Generally, the Wahpeton Fire Department runs its rigs when there is a warning issued for a tornado and straight-line winds expected to exceed the 50 mile per hour range.
"That is a decision made basically by Brett Lambrecht in the emergency management department or a lot of times dispatch will call me," said Dale Rubish, Wahpeton's fire chief.
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One truck sits three miles south of Wahpeton, another by the newest Giants Sunflower Seeds building, on Highway 210, near Wal-mart and close to Richland Road 1. Rubish and the two assistant chiefs watch the skies another mile out of town.
"We basically skirt the whole city," Rubish said. And if a tornado hits, there are people on call and in gear to respond, he added.
Not only does the Wahpeton department monitor cloud activity once a tornado warning is issued, but they also travel through high-risk areas, such as the city's trailer parks. There, firefighters warn the residents to seek shelter in a safe place.
"We try and get as many people aware of it as we can," Rubish said. "[Also] in case a tornado would happen to hit one of our fire halls we don't lose any of our equipment with the building."
Abercrombie Fire Chief Kevin Bernier sent his department out Thursday to storm watch too. He said the Abercrombie crew has several men trained to be weather watchers.
"We now have the capability to activate our city sirens, the weather siren, from our mobile radios as we're weather watching," Bernier said.
He reported Friday afternoon that Abercrombie experienced heavy hail west of the main corridor Thursday between 6 and 7 p.m. The clouds, he said, were doing a lot of up and down motions, in addition to a constant rotation.
Although the Wyndmere Fire Department also monitors the skies in severe weather, they weren't able to pull the trucks out before it hit Thursday.
"This one came so fast that everybody was caught in the hail before the fire trucks could leave the fire hall," said Brian Meslow, Wyndmere's fire chief.
When the department does head out to monitor weather in their area, they typically park in spots 3-4 miles out of town in order to see the weather approaching.
"We've never spotted a tornado and we hope not to. We had enough high winds this time we didn't need a tornado," Meslow said.
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