A STORM TO REMEMBER

By BRANDON HURLEY

b.hurley@beeherald.com

Wind can certainly be a great equalizer. 

 The skies quickly turned dark around 10 a.m. Aug. 10 as street lights flickered and storm clouds rolled through at alarming speeds, seeming as if they dropped from the atmosphere above. Wind guests of more than 80 MPH tore trees free from their roots, knocked out power lines and even ripped through a local hotel roof, leaving in its wake a path of damage that may take days to clean up. 

As Greene County emergency management director Dennis Morlan scanned the radar Monday morning, he knew something great and powerful was about to unfold. The warnings were serious, the impending storm was going to be a memorable one. 

He began preparing himself for damage. 

Morlan says Greene County’s law enforcement and emergency administrators were given a heads up to brace for a “derecho” storm system around 9 a.m. Monday. Which, based on how fast the cell was moving, wasn’t much time at all to prepare for such wreckage. The proper city and county entities all staffed up, buckling down for a storm that could - and ended up being - one of the most devastating in recent memory. 

“We notified that this storm existed and as the morning progressed, I was totally amazed how wide it was and the wind speed,” Morlan said. “Never have I see anything like this.” 

When the rare “derecho” had finally passed through, it had caused more than $10 million of property damage across Greene County.

A line of severe storms suddenly - and eerily - transformed into a crippling system similar to a tornado or a hurricane Monday morning, leaving Greene County and its residents scrambling to recover. The rare “derecho” dropped absolute devastation on Greene County earlier this week, depositing a wake of damage the county had not witnessed in more than two decades. 

The storm left a remarkable mess throughout the county, littering communities with debris and leaving residents without power overnight.  

When the devastating thunderstorm had finally departed Greene County around 11:30 a.m. Aug. 10, residents and business owners were left confused, attempting to assess the permanent damage. Locals quickly pulled out chainsaws and rakes, beginning the cleaning process almost immediately. Trees caved in houses, fences, sheds, garages and toppled power lines all over the county, knocking electricity from homes and businesses around 10:30 a.m., setting forth an afternoon and evening to remember. 

More than 400,000 residents (401,999 to be exact) statewide were left without power following the devastating derecho, according to PowerOutage.US. 

A derecho system, as explained by the National Weather Service in Des Moines, is described as a storm system spanning more than 250 miles in length generating consistent winds of at least 55 miles per hour throughout the entirety of its travels. A derecho commonly produces wind speeds of more than 75 MPH, which were indeed witnessed in Greene, Boone and Story Counties throughout Tuesday, and can reach as high as 130 MPH, winds equivalent to that of an EF2 tornado, according to the National Weather Service. 

A “derecho” a Spanish term defined as “direct” or “straight-ahead,” and was first used in publication by a University of Iowa professor named Dr. Gustavus Hinrichs back in 1888. He used the adjective to explain straight-line wind damage from a tornado. The unique phrase disappeared from American’s vocabularies rather quickly, as it was strangely withheld from weather reports for more than 100 years until meteorologists began using the term again in the mid-1990s. Derechos, the NWS said, are often preceded by ominous-looking shelf clouds, which were certainly present in downtown Jefferson Monday morning. Dark, low clouds moved through the downtown square at tremendous speeds before forming a shelf just east of the courthouse.  

Monday’s derecho originated in southeast South Dakota and rapidly swept through the Midwest before eventually evaporating in Ohio. The system spanned some 770 miles and lasted for more than 14 hours, producing its most intense wind guests in Iowa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday morning. 

Jefferson’s fastest recorded wind speed Monday, according to the National Weather Service out of Des Moines, was 83 MPH just to the east of town. Glidden, some 25 miles to the west of Jefferson, recorded a top speed of 74 MPH. The strongest official wind gust recorded Monday in Iowa was 112 MPH in Linn County while the Marshalltown airport recorded a wind speed of 99 MPH. 

Alliant Energy released a statement on social media Tuesday morning stating it may take crews several days to restore power completely back to the state. The process to return electricity to residents of such high volume is a long one, Alliant said. They first bring power back to essential services such as hospitals and nursing homes. Crews then focus on repairing power lines that can restore electricity to large chunks of residents in the shortest amount of time. From there, they navigate through the varying neighborhoods and businesses across each town and community. 

As far as how many residents in Greene County were without power at the same time Monday, Morlan said it’s rather hard to even place a rough number on it. There’s a distinct possibility that everyone was in the dark, he said. As of 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, nearly 400,000 Iowa residents were still without power. More than 200,000 Alliant Energy customers remained without electricity while 196,000 Mid American customers were still powerless. Power was finally returned to most of Jefferson early Tuesday morning, around 6:30 a.m., a full 18 hours after the storm system knocked out the electricity. Much of Boone had not returned to power as of noon on Tuesday while portions of Ames were finally returning to normalcy mid-morning August 11. 

“I don’t know if anybody knows (how many people were without power),” Morlan said. 

Home State Bank in Jefferson took on a significant amount of water following Monday’s storm. The drive-thru window re-opened at 9:30 Tuesday morning while the lobby will remain closed until Monday. Several, large tree limbs surrounding the historic courthouse broke and fell harmlessly to the ground while almost every street in Jefferson was littered with stray branches, leaves and limbs. Portions of the Cobblestone Inn roof were severely damaged, and the hotel remains closed while construction crews work on a fix. 

Monday’s storm cell was only the third of its kind in Iowa over the last 22 years. Greene County was most recently hit by a derecho on June 29. 1998. 

That devastating system ransacked significant chunk of Iowa back in July of that year. Greene County was one of 38 counties declared a disaster area that month by the Federal Government. A “major damage swath” spanning seven miles in width, according to reports from the National Weather Service, developed northwest of Perry and near Rippey some 22 years ago. That system moved into southern Boone County and into the Des Moines area. 

Iowa last experienced a derecho July 11, 2011 in east central Iowa, as it carved its way through Des Moines as well as Story, Marshall and Tama Counties, leaving s much smaller path of destruction. 

Despite those two strikes, no prior storms, at least in Morlan’s mind, compare to what we all witnessed Monday morning. 

“A lot of people say 1998 was stronger, but that was more contained,” Morlan said. “This was border-to-border wide. I visited with the law enforcement communications center, and I said ‘this ain’t going to be good.’ This probably was going to be the nastiest thing I’ve seen.”

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds issued disaster proclamations for six Iowa counties Tuesday morning, none of which included Greene County. The proclamations will provide relief for residents in Boone, Clinton, Dallas, Johnston, Marshall and Story Counties. Greene County did apply for disaster proclamation Tuesday afternoon after assessing the scope of damage, but had not been approved as of press time. The City of Jefferson estimates it will cost more than $1 million to clean up the storm debris while crop damage, though not yet calculated, will likely exceed one million dollars as well.