Severe thunderstorms hit western South Dakota over the weekend bringing strong winds, rain and large hail to the area.
Fred Lamphere is the Butte County sheriff and emergency manager and said the damage is severe.
“A few ranches and buildings, some sustained literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. Roofs off homes, blew apart buildings, collapsed barns, tipped over semis that were parked with heavy trailers on them and just flipped them over," he said. "So it was pretty intense. We're still assessing all the infrastructure-type damage. It's just going to be a couple of days to start putting everything back together.”
Lamphere said the immediate priority is safety, which includes clearing debris so roads can open back up, and fixing damaged power poles to ensure people have electricity.
@NWSRapidCity Wind driven golf ball sized hail in Belle Fourche SD, busted windows at Conoco pic.twitter.com/UYO8FDxII2
— BlueHusky2154🔜DenFur🐇🍄🪄 (@BlueHusky2154) June 12, 2022
Dave Hintz is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Rapid City and said Sunday’s storm moved southeast from Wyoming into the state.
“And it was over there, north of Phillip I believe, that we got the grapefruit-sized hail which would be for four and a half inches in diameter,” he said.
Hintz warned another storm system is possible today.
“We're looking for stuff possibly to fire across northeastern Wyoming. And this will be later today, late in the afternoon, perhaps even pushing into the early evening, but then pushing northeast through northwestern South Dakota, and then up into North Dakota," he said. "So right now it doesn't look like it should take the same path as what the storms did the previous two days, that everything should kind of transition up to the north and to the east.”
Hintz says after tonight, West River will warm up and said temperatures are expected to be near 100 degrees by Friday.
