Strong winds behind thunderstorms cause damage across the area.

Photo of Strong Easterly wind gusts May 9th

Many people will be cleaning up fallen trees and branches this week after a strange event occurred. Strong winds took down trees across the area some people even lost hour for nearly an hour, but it's where the winds were in the storms that made it strange. After a line of thunderstorms past through, Strong winds blowing from the east out behind a strong pressure gradient behind a weakening area of thunderstorms developed and blew hard for about an hour after storms past through, some of these wind gusts reached near 50MPH in parts of the area.

Pine Branches covering the Eastern yard May 9th 2011

The thunderstorms themselves were pretty typical, they came with heavy rain, small hail and vivid close lightning strikes at my location. There was really no wind to speak of at all until the storms got near Near the end of the rain shelf behind the strongest cells, then strong east winds developed and gusted for about an hour. There were power outages, I believe was from lightning, which took power out to downtown Clayton for an hour to many popular business in town. Damage was pretty minimal around town, There were many pine branches as seen above down in my yard, and the large one is over an inch in diameter. The strongest wind gust on my anemometer was 37MPH from the ESE.

Damage was fairly sporadic, but widespread, with the The most worst of the damage from these winds in central and eastern sections of the area.

Storm Reports

New Richmond 43MPH wind gust

Menomonie 45MPH wind gust

4 NE Menomonie, trees down

Dallas, Trees down SW of Dallas and a large tree top snapped in town.

Amery, 44MPH wind gust

Clayton, small tree branches down, power out for an hour to downtown residents.

Spooner, 40MPH wind gust

Sand Creek, 8 inch diameter tree branch down

Tainter Lake, several trees down

Rice Lake, pine tree snapped

6 NW Rice Lake 8 inch diameter tree branch snapped.