Storm brings near-tornado conditions

Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010

By ELISA SAND, Staff Reporter

Madison and the immediate area came close to tornadic weather conditions on Friday night. "We got excessively lucky," said Don Thomson, Lake County emergency management director. "We were so close to tornado conditions."

Friday's storm brought fast steady rain and winds as high as 65 mph, but the end result was mostly fallen trees and branches.

There was some unique damage, however. West of the Madison Golf and Country Club, an unknown object went through the exterior wall of a house and a 20-ft. trailer rolled over, Thomson said. Other homes had shingle damage.

Damage increased in intensity further north in the county. Thomson said the Rutland area had quite a few downed tree branches.

"The closer you got to Brookings, the more severe it was," he said.

Thomson said the storm resulted from two fast-moving storm cells coming together, dropping in intensity as they moved through the area.

"It built up more intensity and beat on Brookings and Moody County," he said.

Thomson said there were some reports of hail, but it was slushy in nature.

REACT spotters had issues moving around in the storm.

"A lot of spotters tried to reposition, but they were stopped in their tracks," Thomson said, indicating that one spotter couldn't tell at one point if he was stopped or moving because the storm was rocking his vehicle so intensely.

Long-time REACT member Dale Waba reported to Thomson that the storm ranks among one of the worst he's seen.

Electrical system experienced scattered outages. In Madison, the power flickered a few times with the longest outage lasting less than 10 minutes.

According to the city Electric Department, the outages were due to issues with East River Electric lines.

Mike Lynch, communications specialist for East River Electric, said several communities were affected by power outages. They were Chamberlain, Pukwana, Geddes, Armour, Parkston, Madison, Chester, Howard, Salem, Spencer, Colman and Flandreau.

A total of 12,083 customers were affected with the longest outage lasting 9 minutes. Outages took place from 7:15 until 10:32 p.m.

Lynch said that four power poles broke and another 30 are "severely leaning" in Brule County. A tree also fell into a line near Howard.

The longest outages experienced were in the Wentworth and Rutland areas.

Sioux Valley Energy Director of Communications and Government Relations Carrie Law said the Colman-based electric system also experienced some outages in the Madison and Chester area.

One fairly large outage was the result of a brief outage affecting the Lakeview Substation. Law said that outage affected about 1,500 customers.

Additionally, she said, the SVE system had 250 separate outages to individual customers that were caused by trees falling on lines or other wind damage.

Most of those customers experienced one- or two-hour outages, Law said, and all power was restored by noon on Saturday.

Thomson said rainfall in Madison measured about .3 inch. Further north, rain measured an inch.

With already saturated and soft road conditions in the area, Thomson said residents should avoid traveling on gravel roads if possible.

©Madison Daily Leader 2010