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Storms Bring Damaging Wind To Some Areas

June 17, 2024 Steve Schwaller

(Spirit Lake)– Quite a few residents have spent their Monday morning cleaning up from storms that tore through the Iowa Great Lakes and surrounding areas very early today. Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret says there was swath of 50 to 60 mph wind that went across northern Dickinson county, causing considerable damage in some places…

“Numerous branches and in some cases entire trees were blown over. Lake Park had several trees and branches down this morning, a couple up against a couple of houses and some damage to cars over there as well. Also branches down Spirit Lake area, Center Lake area, and then across over to Superior as well.”

Some crop damage is also being reported due to the extremely strong wind, especially west of Milford.

The storms also dumped a significant amount of rain once again, with many locations receiving two inches or more. That’s on top of more than 2.5 inches that fell Saturday. Ehret says that’s causing lake levels to go up rapidly. As of now, he says there are no plans to convene the Emergency Management Commission…

“The commission is pretty well set with the plan we have in place. We’re going to follow that plan. It was revised after we had the high water in 2018. We took input from the public and from many different groups and things like that after that event. We revised the plan then and actually lowered the threshold a couple of inches after that event, went from 6.5 feet down to 6.2. So no, right now no plans to meet. We’re just going to follow the plan as it’s written and go from there.”

Even though we have not yet hit the thresholds for the no wake rule, Ehret is encouraging boaters to be considerate and take it upon themselves to limit their wakes.

Ehret also tells KUOO news they will likely be establishing sandbagging sites.

As of 7:00 am this (Monday) morning, a little more than eight inches of rain has fallen so far for the month of June at the KUOO studios on the west side of Big Spirit Lake. More substantial rain is in the forecast just about every day this week, along with additional chances for severe weather.

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