The Flathead Valley’s cherry crop was spared from damage Wednesday afternoon as a fast-moving storm pummeled the Kalispell area.

“I haven’t heard any horror stories yet,” Ken Edgington, secretary of the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers Association, said Thursday morning. “It looks like we dodged a bullet.”

Edgington, who grows cherries in the Yellow Bay area, said the storm went through that area, dropping a scant amount of hail.

“The pieces of hail were widespread and it didn’t last very long, and there was not a lot of rain here,” he said. “We’re pleasantly pleased. The rain doesn’t scare us as much as hail, but it looks like it didn’t rain enough to call the helicopter.”

With heavy rainfall situations, a helicopter is used to blow the water off the trees to prevent the cherries from splitting. Then growers must wait a day before harvesting the cherries.

Edgington said he hadn’t talked to anyone in the Woods Bay and Bigfork areas about crop damage, but figured he would have heard if there was significant damage.

The cherry harvest is just beginning and should be in full force by the weekend.

A late-season freeze affected the blooms on some cherry trees, and that likely will lower the overall harvest to around 1.5 million pounds, Edgington said. An average cherry crop is about 2.5 million pounds.

The surviving cherries are expected to be bigger. Roadside stands should be plentiful in coming days along Flathead Lake and at other points throughout the area.

About 80 growers belong to the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers cooperative that ships the chilled cherries to Monson Fruit Co. in Selah, Wash., for processing.

Other fruit growers were not as lucky. Merle Baldwin on Montford Road east of Kalispell said his fruit orchard was devastated by hail that piled up two inches deep on Wednesday.

And the storm had devastating consequences elsewhere: Three people were hit by lightning on the east side of Glacier Park and had to be rescued off a trail and transported to Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.