News

Storms bring mixed bag along Iowa/Minnesota border

Severe weather brought some welcome and unwelcome conditions through northern Iowa and southern Minnesota Wednesday.

Martin County, Minnesota farmer Lawrence Sukalski says he was in a machine shed early last evening when the first round of thunderstorms moved in.

“Very, very high winds here on the Minnesota and Iowa border.  I don’t know how wide a band it was, but it hailed for about 10 minutes.  And during the stage of the corn now when it’s tasseling, that’s a little bit of a concern.  And you can see a lot of bruises on the plants.”

He tells Brownfield the storms did provide some needed moisture.

“We had five and-a-half inches of rain in June, but we probably only had a couple tenths in July.  So our roots were probably a little shallow from all that rain before.  But overall, the (rain) was good.  We do have a few broken-off corn plants here and there too, but hopefully it’s just isolated.”

Sukalski says there were also reports of golf ball-sized hail near Fairmont, Minnesota overnight, but he hasn’t noticed damage to crops in that area while scouting fields this morning.