National Weather Service officials say all the pieces fell together for a strong line of thunderstorms to produce damaging hail and destructive winds Thursday.
Meteorologist Michaela Wood works in the National Weather Service Office in suburban Omaha.
“As it moved into southwest Iowa, it just kind of became a straight-line-wind machine,” said meteorologist Michaela Wood, who works in the NWS Office in suburban Omaha.
90 mile per hour winds were reported in Essex. Wood said the Weather Service has fielded reports of damage to trees, buildings and grain bins, plus heavy rainfall. “Some reports close to the 4 to 5 inch range, so there were some flash flood warnings out there as well,” Wood said. “Hail up just over 3 inches actually fell in southwest Iowa.”
There were tornado warnings, too, and at least two confirmed touchdowns in the early hours of the storm. Wood said Weather Service officials are investigating the damage and evaluating whether Thursday’s outbreak can be classified as a derecho. “It has to be either continuous or intermittant for closer to 400 miles, so that’s something that’s really investigated after the fact and we’ll have to see if it meets that kind of length and time threshold,” Wood said, “but regardless if it hits that or not, the straight line wind damage was definitely impressive.”
Lee Brooke, who farms near Clarinda, is worried about the water sitting in his fields. “We were waiting to get in to spray our beans. The water hemp is getting taller than the beans, but there’s some areas from Clarinda south into Missouri that have had 15 inches in the past two weeks,” Brooke said, adding another inch and a half or so fell in the Clarinda area Thursday morning.
Mark Peterson, who farms near Stanton, said the rain came fast. “At about a quarter to six, in a matter of probably 10 minutes, we got about an inch and a quarter of rain and we’re pretty well saturated,” Peterson said, adding much of the Stanton community was still without power late Thursday afternoon. By 5 p.m. yesterday, Alliant Energy reported 2500 homes and businesses in four southwest Iowa counties didn’t have electricity; the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperaties reported power was still knocked out of over 2000 of their rural customers, and MidAmerican’s outage map showed just under 1900 Iowa customers were without power at 5 p.m.
(By Mike Peterson, KMA, Shenandoah; Brent Barnett of Brownfield Ag News and Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson)