KDSN RADIO News
Several tornadoes, 3.5R43; diameter hail, 88 MPH winds hit eastern Iowa
Powerful storms moved over eastern Iowa Tuesday night, bringing reports of tornadoes, large hail, and high winds.
Delaware County Emergency Management Coordinator Mandy Bieber says there are multiple reports of damage.
“Right along the Highway 20 corridor, we saw machine sheds and outbuildings damaged, lots of trees down, power lines down,” Bieber says. “With the heavy rain, we have some washed-out roads, lots of field, tile, and ditch flooding.”
There were sheet metal roofs ripped off in Independence, where a barn lost its roof, and hail three-and-a-half inches in diameter north of Independence. Tornadoes were reported near Winthrop and near Masonville. Power lines are down in Delaware County. There’s heavy damage to farm buildings and wooden stakes impaled into the ground in the Delhi area, and wind gusts of 88 miles an hour were recorded at the Dubuque Regional Airport.
“We saw some pretty significant-sized hail with it as well, and then as it moved across the county, it kind of shifted from smaller, isolated, tornadic activity to a converged cell that had straight-line winds in it,” Bieber says, “and that was what the Delhi area saw was pretty significant straight-line winds.”
A rope tornado was also photographed near Onslow in Jones County.
National Weather Service meteorologist Donna Dubberke says there’s the potential for more severe storms this afternoon.
“Friday looks like another one, in fact, the risk for Friday is greater than it is today,” Dubberke says. “The story for the weekend will be the cold air coming in with the potential for freezing temperatures, even starting Friday night, and then even colder on Saturday night. So we could see some 20s in the forecast.”
For the moment, she says Thursday’s weather should be mostly calm.
(By Janelle Tucker, KMCH, Manchester /Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City)
