(Spirit Lake)– A winter storm that coated everything in a quarter of-an-inch of ice followed by eight inches of snow caused few problems locally.
That word from Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret, who tells KUOO news we were very lucky compared to areas east of us.
Other than some tree limbs, Ehret says there was very little or no property damage in Dickinson county. He says there was once instance in the Arthur Heights area on East Lake Okoboji in which a tree fell down on some power lines. But he says crews were able to quickly clean it up.
While no widespread power outages were reported in Dickinson county, there were sporadic outages. Terry Bruns of Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative says they were the result of the wind blowing ice-coated power lines, causing them to bounce up and down or “gallop”. Bruns says anyone with low-hanging or downed power lines should leave them alone and call the power company to report them.
It’s a similar scenario for Jackson, Minnesota-based Federated Rural Electric Association, which experienced a number of storm-related outages over the weekend–including one Saturday evening that affected the city of Jackson and areas surrounding it.
