Earl Wilbur Magnuson, 88, of Misquah — no relation to this newspaper’s pressman, a distinction he took quiet pleasure in maintaining — died Monday, June 1, 2026, at the Lakeview care home in Pinedale. For forty years he weighed this town’s grain and forecast its weather, and was dependable at one of those two things.

He was born April 11, 1938, on a farm in Sandy Lake Township, the son of Albert and Mabel (Carlson) Magnuson, and graduated from Lakeside High School in 1956. He married Vivian Thorson in 1959; she survives him. Together they raised three children and a long succession of bird dogs, none of which, he cheerfully admitted, ever fully learned their business, “same as the rest of us.”

From 1962 until 2002, Earl ran the scale at the Misquah Co-op elevator, where he weighed every load of corn and beans the township brought in and knew, to the bushel, what kind of year a man was having before the man himself did. He served also as the elevator’s unofficial forecaster, issuing predictions from the scale house with great confidence and middling accuracy, and maintaining a decades-long and entirely friendly rivalry with Tim Brevik over who could better read the western sky. The standings, both men always agreed, were “about even, which suits us fine.”

He is survived by his wife, Vivian; by three children, Mark (Julie) Magnuson of Sandy Lake, Brian Magnuson of Fargo, and Susan (Kevin) Thorson of Misquah; by nine grandchildren; and by every farmer who ever trusted his scale, which was all of them. Funeral services will be held Saturday, June 6, at 11 a.m. at First Lutheran Church. Memorials may be directed to the Sandy Lake cemetery association and to the Lakeside FFA. In keeping with his wishes, the family reports the forecast for the service as “partly cloudy, chance of a shower” — Earl’s own, and therefore not to be relied upon.