Possible tornado touches down near Eagle Grove
Trees and buildings damaged
EAGLE GROVE — A severe thunderstorm with high winds and a possible tornado inflicted some damage in rural Wright County, between Eagle Grove and Woolstock, on Tuesday afternoon.
Shortly after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, a storm hit the area, causing damage to several trees, as well as destroying a machine shed at 1365 308th St.
Wright County Emergency Management Coordinator Jarika Eisentrager said that the county had not yet confirmed that the weather that hit the Woolstock area was in fact a tornado.
“We do have some trees down and there’s a machine shed that’s pretty roughed up, but the National Weather Service hasn’t confirmed that it was a tornado touchdown,” she said.
The machine shed on Dan Flumerfelt’s property on 308th Street ended up a shredded and mangled mess, tangled in some tree branches and strewn across a field on the other side of the tree line. It appeared that the wind or the possible tornado ripped the metal machine shed right out of the ground, leaving behind the combine tractor it was protecting.
Flumerfelt said that his family was home when the storm hit, but thankfully the winds did not damage the family home or any other buildings on the farm, and no one was injured.
“It could have been a lot worse, for sure,” he said.
Jake Grandgeorge, another resident of Wright County, is counting himself lucky after the storm caused a tree in front of his house to crack in half and tip over, just narrowly missing the front of the house on 330th Street just west of Woolstock.
“I was working on the machine shed at my grandma’s place and got done and came home and saw this,” he said.
Other than some bent rain gutters, there was no obvious damage to the home. However, a closer inspection will be needed, Grandgeorge said.
“There’s no broken windows,” he said. “We won’t know about all the damage until we get up in the attic and see if there’s anything there.”
Wright County emergency personnel continued checking out the storm’s damage around the county for the remainder of the afternoon.
“We have a lot of people out making sure that no one is injured, making sure all the damage is assessed,” Eisentrager said.