Severe storms bring wicked winds to Adair County

Outdoor warning sirens rang out across Adair County at closing time Wednesday as severe storms that had been touted for the last few days raced toward this area as advertised.

Unprecedented high temperatures and higher than usual dew points fueled a squall line of storms packing winds in excess of 70 mph in some places.

The storms hit at approximately 4:50 p.m. as parts of Adair County were placed under a tornado warning for a confirmed tornado north of Atlantic in Cass County. While no confirmed tornadoes were reported here in the county, Adair and Guthrie County Emergency Management Director Bob Kempf said there was likely at least one tornado touchdown in the Guthrie Center vicinity.

“We had spotters spread out throughout all of Adair and Guthrie Counties, and I personally was up at the Adair cutoff along Highway 44 west of Guthrie Center when it hit,” Kempf said. “We probably experienced a good 15, 20 minutes of 60 or 70 mph winds until the actual front made it to us. When the front got here it moved through very quickly. There was a lot of wind before it, then the front, then we had a brief period of rain that was followed by the dirt. The dirt just made mud on the windshield.”

At last check Thursday afternoon, Kempf was surveying damage of seven power poles down in a farmers’ cornfield north of Adair.

Closer to home, the damage was primarily confined to tree damage. Alliant Energy reported Wednesday night it had a total of 63,824 customers without power, and some of those were in Bridgewater. That community had power back on at 1:08 a.m. Fire department volunteers had a generator going at the community’s fire station for those who needed shelter with power.

A large tree was snapped about 10 feet from its base at the corner of First and Walnut Streets in Bridgewater and another was uprooted at Melissa Buckner’s residence in Fontanelle. The sirens sounded well before the storm hit, she said, but it was still a scary experience.

“The wind was loud here and we heard things banging against the west side of the house,” Buckner said. “My daughter kept asking if that was the sound of a tornado but I told her no, just the strong winds. I couldn’t believe the winds lifted the tree right from the ground, roots and all.”

Thanks to a great deal of the city’s electrical infrastructure being underground, Greenfield Municipal Utilities General Manager Scott Tonderum said the impact in Greenfield was fairly minimal.

A tree was down in the 400 block of NE Hayes Street but was cleaned up promptly Thursday morning by city and GMU crews working together. There were other trees downed around town, a resident that reported a large outdoor cabinet had fallen and another who had a play structure knocked over.

“We really had minimal damage. We lost a street light pole. Around town we had quite a few trees down. We had no outages, but I will attribute that to the fact that we’re over 90% underground,” Tonderum said. “We were very fortunate.”

Other reports were a historic tree was lost in the Hill of Zion Cemetery east of Orient. Also, a resident in Stuart was said to have lost a shed in the storms.

To top it off, strong winds that preceded and followed the severe storms blew in a smoke smell from wildfires burning in Kansas.