Hail storm

Nasty storm brings lightning and hail

by Marie Delzer

Too close for comfort.

Those were Ron Litsey’s thoughts as he was sitting on his front steps, enjoying the beautiful, calm evening, eyeing the sky watching the lightning, around 10 p.m. Saturday evening.

He wasn’t sitting there long, when approximately 16 feet east of his house, a lightning bolt struck a tree and stripped the bark, throwing pieces of wood all over the yard. Some flew in his direction, landing on the deck behind him, but did not hit him.

The lightning stripped the north side of the trunk, but the next day, when he was assessing the situation, he also noticed bark missing on the east side.

“ It all happened so quick,” Litsey said, “It sounded like a bunch of firecrackers going off in sequence, only much louder. That same tree was hit by lightning several years ago. It was a tree with two trunks and the one trunk that got hit earlier, eventually hollowed out and died, so we removed it, but with this one, well, we’ll just have to wait and see what it does.”

This 50 foot tall, majestic cottonwood has a little sentimental value.

Litsey’s wife Barbara said, “That tree was planted in 1913, the year my dad, Walter Kraemer, was born. We’ll really miss it if we have to remove it.”

Only time will tell the ending of this story.

The Litsey farm homestead is located 3 miles west of Ashley, south of Hoskins Lake.

Along with the lightning show Saturday evening, came the hail. Pea sized hail hit the Ashley area.

Kari Lindgren of Farmers Union Insurance reported crop damage varied from 30 percent all the way to 100-percent loss in the Venturia and Zeeland areas.

Fifteen miles southeast of Ashley, pea to nickel sized hail blanketed the area at the James Goehring farm in South Dakota. They estimate 70-80 percent damage to their small grain crops but think the corn and soybeans will come back.

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