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Storm damages crops, farms in northeast Iowa

Corn field in Floyd County, Iowa on June 22. (Photo courtesy of Phil Pitzenberger)

Corn field in Floyd County, Iowa on June 22. (Photo courtesy of Phil Pitzenberger)

A storm packing winds up to 100 miles per hour damaged crops and farmsteads in northeast Iowa on Monday.

Mark Recker, who farms near Arlington, Iowa, tells Brownfield he lost a grain leg and a grain bin, and the roofs off two other bins.  Tuesday was clean-up day.

“I have corn in a bin and we’re trying to get things in place—get the steel extracted out of the old grain leg that’s twisted and on the ground, and the old bin roof—get that taken out with a crane,” Recker says, “and then hopefully get in a situation where we can get a new roof put on by next week, to put a cover back on that grain.”

Recker says it’s too early to tell how much damage was done to corn.

“It laid the corn over in a lot of places—some green snap, I think, took place,” he says. “But it’s at that stage where you don’t quite know and I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the corn stands back up—and I think most of it will.”

AUDIO: Mark Recker

Bob Hemesath farms about 40 miles north of Recker, near the town of Calmar.  He says it rained hard for a time, but they avoided the really strong winds.

“On my home place we had just over two inches—it came in a little over an hour,” Helmesath says. “We had a little bit of wind and we’ve got some corn leaning here and there.”

But Helmesath says his corn was already starting to straighten up by Monday evening.

AUDIO: Bob Hemesath

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