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Hail and Rain strike area

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'Training of thunderstorms' blamed for more than 4 inches of rainfall
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By
Mavis Fodness

Sunday’s almost six-hour weather event is likened to a freight train, according to the National Weather Service.
In his 20 years with the Sioux Falls NWS Kyle Weisser said thunderstorms generally flow out of an area after a single event, but Sunday’s storm fronts were stopped due to a more powerful storm front.
“It’s called training of thunderstorms,” he said. “It’s not a real common event.”
Derived from how a train and its cars travel along a track, Sunday’s thunderstorms stacked up as they hit a boundary created by a stronger weather event occurring to the north of Rock County, Weisser said.
Training of thunderstorms results in a larger accumulation of rainfall amounts, he said.
For the Luverne area, unofficial rainfall amounts reached 4 inches or more in certain areas.
West of Luverne, however, one of those trainings developed hailstones.
John and Kathy Jarchow live four miles northwest of Luverne on 90th Avenue.
“It rained every hour on the hour,” John Jarchow said.
Rain showers began around 5 a.m., and the last front coming through around 11:30 a.m. dropped hailstones that lasted for 10 to 15 minutes.
“We were right in the bull’s eye,” Jarchow said.
He said the hailstones started out pea-sized but quickly grew to the size of golf balls that dented vehicles and building siding and piled off his home’s roof to create a mound of ice on his deck.
“It was coming off like crazy,” he said. “The rain was absolutely perfect up until then.”
Crop damage was limited to a small swatch, according to crop insurance agent Barb Anderson with Cattnach Insurance in Luverne, but the plant damage was extensive.
She said damage was limited to a couple of sections north and east of Beaver Creek where corn and soybeans were stripped of vegetation.
“It was bad where it hailed,” Anderson said.

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