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Storms bring flooding, hail, power outages to southern Iowa farms

Severe weather early Thursday morning left many southern Iowa farmers checking fields for damage.

Lee Brooke farms near Clarinda in Page County and tells Brownfield that torrential rain, hail, and strong winds swept through the county.

“People south of me were getting some softball and baseball size hail,” Brooke said, “down towards north of Clarinda, in Clarinda, and east.”

Brooke says he’s concerned about the water levels in his crop fields.

“We were waiting to get in to spray our beans,” Brooke said. “The waterhemp is getting to be taller than our beans. There’s some areas from Clarinda south into Missouri that have had 15 inches the last two weeks plus whatever they had this morning.”

Mark Peterson farms near Stanton in Montgomery County and says cleanup at the family farmstead should take about half a day.

“About a quarter to six, in a matter of 10 minutes we got about an inch and a quarter of rain,” Peterson said. “We were pretty well saturated because we’ve been getting in on some of these heavy rains that have been coming through. So, we’ve got a fair amount of washing going on.”

Peterson says much of the Stanton community was still without power as of late Thursday afternoon. He also reported significant flash flooding in several other southwest Iowa communities.

Lee Brooke:

Mark Peterson: