Strong winds cause problems across the state

Strong winds ripped across Iowa Sunday, tearing off roofs and blowing away anything else that wasn’t nailed down. National Weather Service Meteorologist Mark Russell says there hasn’t been much of a letup today. He says wind gusts were still at 25 to 30 miles an hour with sustained wins in the 15 to 20 mile an hour range. Russell says we get one or two of these heavy wind events each winter. He says it’s a “northwest flow, it’s a strong pressure system moving off the Great Lakes.” He says the winds will die down later this afternoon. Russell says the wind blast probably impacted people a little more since the winds dropped the temperature dramatically. He says people had to transition from weather that was above 40 degrees to a rapid change below. The winds knocked out power to several thousand people across Iowa Sunday, but a MidAmerican Energy spokesman says most of the power was restored by the evening. A roof was ripped off of a bar in Anamosa. No one was hurt. The winds also destroyed a fabric dome over a constructions site in Ames. The dome was built to allow construction work to continue on the animal research building at the National Animal Disease Center.