Deer Park Area News and Events

The Wet and Wild month of June 2005

Calvary Trees
Calvary Cemetery

Calvary Cemetery lost some old friends during a storm on Wednesday evening, June 29th. Several trees met their demise, pictured are downed trees lining the south edge of the cemetery.

Two trees were damaged along the north driveway with one totally lost. A total of four trees were lost plus a big limb from a big pine tree from a south - southwest wind. Three arbor vitae also lost limbs in addition to other minor damage.

The corn near the cemetery and some trees are leaning way over.

Arnold H barn
The Bill Fouks Farm

Bill Fouks' barn on the former Arnold Hemauer farm was blown down and an attached shed was damaged.

In Deer Park, numerous trees were down and power was out. Jim and Linda Fouks had a shed blown across the road. A horse shed north of the former Freeman Davies homestead lost part of the roof steel.

Broken Tree

Flat Barn
Fouks' Barn

Text and photos courtesy of Lowell Fouks.


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High winds KO power, uproot trees
Friday, July 08, 2005
By Karl Puckett, News staff reporter, kpuckett@rivertowns.net

Calvary Tree Uprooted
Calvary Cemetery
Photo by Karl Puckett, New Richmond News

A severe thunderstorm battered parts of St. Croix County late last Wednesday, knocking out power to hundreds of energy customers and uprooting or snapping just as many trees.

“It’s a mess, but we really are lucky,” said Sheri Weber, who lives on 220th Street in Cylon Township.

Weber and many of her neighbors in the townships northeast of New Richmond were hardest hit. Trees were down all over, some snapped in two and others undone roots and all, including a few at Calvary Cemetery just outside of Deer Park. But residents like Weber were thankful because their homes escaped serious damage and they weren’t injured.

The National Weather Service blamed straight-line winds, as opposed to tornados that hit southwest Minnesota.

“They were definitely above 60 [mph],” said Karen Trammell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen, Minn. “Probably somewhere between 60 and 70.”

A storm complex began west of the Twin Cities, she said. It intensified as it crossed into Wisconsin.

The storm hit the New Richmond area at around 11 p.m.

“It actually looks like a logger came through here and logged our trees,” said Cylon Township resident Tina Johnson, who lives 1 1/2 miles east of Highway 46.

She heard a loud clatter as the storm raged through. At about 1 a.m., neighbors, already beginning the clean-up, checked on Johnson and her two children to see if she was OK. Her husband, a truck driver, was on the road.

Johnson figured a few trees were lost. In the morning, she was “sick” to learn that the storm had wiped out 40 trees, most of them white pines.

In the future, she said she would have a safety plan in place because the storm came up so quickly and caught the family off guard.

But Thursday morning, she was thanking God because she said it could have been worse.

“Trees are replaceable,” said Johnson, assessing damage in the area on a four-wheeler. “But family’s not.”

Just down 220th Street from Johnson, workers with N.R. Tree Service were cleaning up the yard of Weber, who lost 10 to 15 trees, including a big old oak in the front yard.

Weber and her family were awakened by the noise of the storm. They watched as trees swayed eight feet.

“As we were looking out we saw the oak tree tip,” she said.

A few hundred rural St. Croix Electric Coop customers lost power, with the majority in the upper third of St. Croix County including Somerset, Richmond, St. Joseph, Stanton, Forest, Emerald, Glenwood and Cylon townships, said line superintendent Larry Gilbertson.

Power still was being gradually restored as of last Thursday morning.

“There was a couple of lightning strikes that caused a few of the outages but most of it was tree damage,” Gilbertson said.

Xcel Energy reported 22,000 customers without power in its Wisconsin service area but just a handful in St. Croix County.

Content © 2005 The New Richmond News


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