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High winds wreak havoc, cut power in area
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Times photo: Gary Mays Eric Jordan of Professional Roofing and Repair on Wednesday surveys wind damage to a house in the 1600 block of 13th Avenue. The area is still cleaning up from a wind storm that blew with blizzard-like force across the nations midsection. Elsewhere in Green County, a man was uninjured when his vehicle struck a tree that had been blown over onto Puddledock Road in the Town of Adams, authorities said.
MONROE - Under sustained high winds for a second day, trees, highway signs and electrical lines in Green and Lafayette counties began to show some fatigue.

Hundreds of customers in Green and Lafayette counties were without power late Wednesday afternoon.

But county officials said the material damage, thus far, is minimal.

"Damages are starting to leak in," said Jeff Skatrud, Green County deputy sheriff.

At about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Skatrud reported a downed power line on County K, north of County P, south east of Monroe. He also reported "a few more trees" have been downed by the winds on Wednesday.

"I think the sustained winds are starting to wear," he said. "But it's nothing earth shaking."

According to Steve Schultz, Alliant Energy spokesman, the high winds are causing more incidents of power outages. But, he added, each incident isn't impacting large numbers of customers.

Power lines are holding up better in Green, Rock and Lafayette counties than in some neighboring counties.

"Interestingly, Green and Rock counties, over the past day and a half, haven't seen too much damage," Schultz said.

Alliant Energy's online power outage summary showed the number of Green County customers without power on Wednesday jumped from 15 at about 1:30 p.m. to 800 by 3:30 p.m. and to 1,390 by 4:15 p.m.

Alliant serves more than 17,000 customers in Green County.

The number of customers without power in Lafayette County peaked at 90 at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. No customers were reported without power at 1:30 p.m. Alliant serves 4,500 customers in Lafayette County.

Dick Marty, Green County Highway Department patrol superintendent, said about four highway signs and a couple tree limbs had been felled by winds. Damage to trees was more prevalent on township roads, he added.

"It's a little breezy," he said. "But we are secure."

Lafayette County Highway Commissioner, Tom Jean, said he has never seen such "historic winds" in his lifetime.

Jean reported U.S. Highway 151 has had no damage, but about nine to 10 trees and some tree limbs large enough to block traffic were removed from county roads.

Jean said incidents were reported in a number of locations, with most of them on the eastern side of the county.

The National Weather Service in Milwaukee and Sullivan, reported very windy conditions through Wednesday, with damaging wind gusts up to 60 mph. The service issued a high wind warning, in effect until 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Winds were expected to diminish late Wednesday, weather officials said.