RAGING WIND: A state trooper's dashcam captures the moment a semi truck is blown over by high winds in Nebraska.
In southeastern Minnesota, Olmsted County Sheriff’s Lt. Lee Rossman said a 65-year-old man was killed Wednesday night when a 40-foot tree blew onto him outside his home. In southwestern Kansas, blinding dust kicked up by the storms Wednesday led to two separate crashes that killed three people, Kansas Highway Patrol trooper Mike Racy said. And in eastern Iowa, a semitrailer was struck by high winds and rolled onto its side Wednesday evening, killing the driver, the Iowa State Patrol confirmed.
The destructive weather system developed amid unprecedented warmth for December in the Plains and northern states. That included temperatures that rose to 70 degrees Fahrenheit across southwestern Wisconsin on Wednesday evening. The Weather Company historian Chris Burt compared the heat to that of a “warm July evening.”
There were more than 20 tornado reports Wednesday in the Plains states, scattered mostly through eastern Nebraska and Iowa, based on preliminary reports to the Storm Prediction Center. The storm system led to the most reports of hurricane-force wind gusts — 75 mph or higher — on any day in the U.S. since 2004, the center said.
The winds also whipped up dust that reduced visibility to zero in parts of Kansas and caused at least four semitrailers to blow over, leading officials to temporarily close much of Interstate 70, as well as all state highways in nine northwestern Kansas counties. The system blew into the Plains from Colorado, sending gale-force winds across a swath from New Mexico to Minnesota, Wisconsin and upper Michigan. The weather service recorded a gust of 107 mph Wednesday morning at Lamar, Colorado, and gusts of 100 mph in Russell, Kansas.
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