FM takes brunt of fast-moving Tuesday storm

FORT MADISON - A brief but powerful stormfront that came through Lee County late last night left city crews with downed trees and branches and several reports of power line interruptions, but no injuries.
Lee County Emergency Management Agency Coordinator Jason Dinwiddie said Fort Madison took the brunt of the storm in physical damage, but no injuries were reported.
"Basically Fort Madison got the worst of it. We didn't have any reports of structural damage other than some downed power lines and trees on cars. There were some reports of brief high winds with some power line damage. At least three were reported in Fort Madison and multiple trees were down," Dinwiddie said.
Straight line winds did blow down an open brick wall in the 1100 block of Avenue I leaving masonry bricks in the street, according to Fort Madison Police working the storm Tuesday night.
Fort Madison Public Works director Mark Bousselot said there appeared to be isolated power outages in the city, but he hasn't heard of anything other than downed trees and several power lines as a result of the storm.
Alliant Energy and Fort Madison street crews were working in the city into the late evening hours cleaning up debris.
It seems the storm gave the area a slight break as the National Weather Service out of the Quad Cities was predicting 3/4" in hail and winds as high as 60 mph to accompany the storm. Some rural areas northwest of Fort Madison reported small hail and heavy rain.