High-Powered Winds Damage Corn and Soybean Fields in Portions of Northeast Iowa, Minnesota

Just over a year after a wide swath of Iowa was blasted with damaging winds from the derecho, Iowa farmers were dealt another crop production blow Tuesday. 100 mph winds were clocked in Oelwein, Iowa, which is located northeast of Waterloo.

“It’s a little broader area than what I thought it was probably going to be,” says Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk, who toured the damage Tuesday night. “I mean, Tripoli, Iowa, take a look at that area; that’s north of Highway 3 in northeast Iowa. Also downtown Littleton, which is straight east of Waterloo, was also hit. So, that’s 40 miles north to south. And some of the damage inside of there is pretty devastating, especially at this time of the year.”

Flory says driving through the damage, it’s questionable how much of the corn crop will be able to stand back up after the wind whipped and laid it flat. The aftermath devastating for the crops this late in the season On the positive side, Flory says the damage, however, not as severe as the derecho produced in August 2020.

“It laid some of these cornfields just absolutely flat,” he says. “But as far as scope goes, 700 some miles is what the derecho damaged last year. You just can’t compare it to that. But if you’re in the middle of it, yeah, absolutely. It’s the same kind of devastating damage.”

It wasn’t just corn crops damaged. Flory says soybean fields weren’t spared, also flattened by the winds Tuesday. Pictures show soybean fields unrecognizable, with tangled plants and crops blown over in fields.

“I can’t remember seeing bean fields get laid as flat as some of the fields that I saw over around the Fairbank, Iowa area,” Flory adds. “Soybean fields just laid flat, stripped of all their leaves. I don’t know what’s going to be the outcome of those fields, but it’s going to be really difficult. So there’s damage to corn and to soybeans. It’s I’m curious to know just how far east the damage goes.”

Minnesota farmers had row crop fields suffer damage. Zach Johnson, known as “Millennial Farmer” on social media, farms in central Minnesota and shared a picture of one of his corn fields impacted by the winds. He says the worst of the damage was about one to two miles wide, but with fields already suffering from drought, the wind took advantage of crops that were already struggling to hang on.

“I’ve only been within a five-mile radius of home, but it’s everywhere in that area. Some spots are clearly worse than others. The worst of it was only one to two miles wide,” he says. “To be fair, the area impacted in the photo is clearly some of our worst stuff, but it’s not hard to drive around and find plenty of examples of that. The stalks are so small and brittle from being short of rain all summer.”

Flory says the core of the damage in Iowa is a strip from Tripoli, Iowa to Littleton, Iowa, with the POET ethanol plant in Fairbank, Iowa notifying growers Tuesday night that the plant would be closed for receiving corn on Wednesday. And other infrastructure was also a victim of the winds this week.

“I saw some damage to some grain bins,” says Flory. “I saw some damage to at least one dryer out there, I’ve got to believe that I didn’t cover the entire area, I believe there’s a little bit more damage out there.”

While growers and area residents work to clean up the damage, Flory says even though fields are flattened in the hardest-hit areas, he thinks farmers will be able to harvest most of the damaged crops this fall, but the harvest will come with headaches and be a slow process with the crops flattened like they are.

“Most of it is going to be harvestable, but it’ll be interesting to see what it looks like in a couple of days, just how well it can stand back up,” says Flory. “ But at this time of the year, it’s going to be difficult for that corn crop to stand back up. But for the most part, I would think that they’d be able to get out there and get something out of those fields.”

Calvin Vogel farms 20 miles east of Waterloo, Iowa, just south of Fairbank. He says prior to Tuesday’s winds, he had a great crop on his hands, especially considering how dry it was all summer. He described the winds as “derecho type winds,” impacting a small area where he farms. The winds came with more than 3 inches of rain. The rains were welcomed, the winds were not.

The high-powered winds hit less than a week after that portion of Iowa was covered on the Pro Farmer Crop Tour. After the Crop Tour was complete, Pro Farmer release yield estimates, projecting a national corn yield of 177 bu. per acre, and pegging soybean yield at 51.2 bu. per acre. Both of those numbers are above USDA’s latest projection released in August. And Flory says his outlook on the crop hasn’t changed, even after with the damage produced by the high winds this week.

“Boy if you’re in the middle of it, it’s devastating, but I don’t think so on the big picture, I don’t think at this point that it’s a big enough area to start whittling away at the national crop,” says Flory.