The atmosphere unleashed its fury just over a week ago.

The air felt different on Aug. 17 as strong southeast winds blew into a dark mass of clouds between Rapid City and Sturgis. I felt it and many of you felt it. You didn't have to be a meteorologist to know that there was something terribly wrong with the weather.

By the time 4:30 p.m. rolled around, a big thunderstorm was sitting over Piedmont and Tilford, lobbing huge hailstones at the ground and pumping out water at the rate of 2 to 4 inches per hour. The storm was seemingly stationary.

During the course of the next hour, the warm moist air south of the storm became increasingly unstable, giving rise to thunderstorms across an area from Johnson Siding and Rapid City to south of Hermosa. Each was carrying with it copious rain and super-sized hail.

The wind flow in the storms suggested the possibility of tornadoes and that was enough to trigger the civil defense sirens, which wailed off and on for more than an hour.

The water in creeks rose as the rain came down. Unfortunately, the thunderstorms moved incredibly slowly and all we could do was to watch the water levels rise higher and higher.

There was absolutely nothing that could be done to stop it from happening.

There were no switches to throw and no knobs to turn to shut off the water. Nature was in control, and there was no possibility for human intervention.

The best news is that no lives were lost.

The floods that swept through Hermosa, Piedmont and other areas caused deep hardship, but hopefully, this system of storms will spare others from similar suffering.

Over the past couple of years, I have written several times about how foolhardy it is to contemplate allowing buildings in flood plains - even old flood plains.

The stormy evening of Aug. 17 proved that once an area is prone to floods, it is always prone to floods.

Every developer and every city official who wants to encroach on floodplains ought to look at Hermosa, Piedmont, the areas around Cleghorn Canyon and Rapid Valley - to name only a few locales - where heavy equipment had to be used to move debris.

After a long hot summer, more moisture will fall and more flooding is possible as we move into autumn.

As cool autumn air continues to rush down from Canada to replace summer's oppressive heat, rain will be widespread across South Dakota, making these last days of August and the first days of September downright soggy.

That is good news for anyone who still needs rain and for anyone who abhors wildfires.

It is bad news for everyone involved in the cleanup in the aftermath of recent floods.

The temperature will make another one day burst toward 90 degrees next weekend.

The week following Labor Day will start out chilly, then warm up into the 70s. Great weather for heading back to school.

Chris Orr is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist in private practice, morning meteorologist at KNBN-TV NewsCenter1 and can be heard onthe radio show Live With Jim Thompson on Wednesdays. E-mail him at weather@rapidwx.com or goto www.rapidwx.com