Series of thunderstorms lash area with rains
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Severe weather 2010
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Megan Meisberger clears debris from a whirlpool of water going down a storm drain at the end of her driveway on Walker Street in Janesville.
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A man was lucky to catch a Janesville City Bus during a downpour at the intersection of Milton Avenue and Blackbridge Road.
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A car sits stalled on the westbound ramp from Parker Drive onto the Memorial bridge as a van trudges through the deep water on Parker Drive heading under the underpass during heavy rains.
JANESVILLE — It seems Mother Nature is compensating for the delay.
After three weeks of intense heat and dry weather, the skies opened up and poured more than 2.2 inches of rain on Janesville by 11 p.m. Thursday. A series of storms rumbled through south-central Wisconsin on Thursday night.
No major damage was reported in Rock or Walworth counties by the Gazette's deadline.
The first blast took place between about 5 and 7 p.m.
The National Weather Service in Sullivan has fielded many calls reporting tornadoes in Rock and Jefferson counties Thursday night, meteorologist Ashley Sears said.
Reports came from the area between Whitewater and Edgerton and from Whitewater into the Jefferson County area along the county line, she said.
Other reports came from the area north of Milton along Highway 59 and County N, Sears said.
While many callers reported tornadoes in rural Whitewater, a City of Whitewater Police Department dispatcher at 8:30 p.m. reported no major storm activity had taken place in the city.
A storm survey team will assess the areas on Friday, Sears said.
Some communities were reporting up to 4 inches of rain, she said.
A second blast hit Janesville just before 9 p.m.
A transformer was "sparking and arcing" at that time near the intersection of Benton Avenue and Yuba Street, Rock County Communications Supervisor Shelley Schmidt said.
She could not confirm lightning struck in the area.
Power was out near Menards, including stoplights, Schmidt said. At about the same time, callers in Evansville started reporting trees down, Schmidt said.
At about 9:15, callers were reporting trees down in rural Edgerton and Milton, she said.
The "tree down" calls were confined to the northern quarter of the county, Schmidt said.
Thursday afternoon, tornado warning sirens sounded twice, as a band of severe storms marched across northern Rock County and southern Dane County. No damage was reported.
Janesville Police Sgt. Anne Brophy said the heavy rain Thursday morning resulted in about 20 calls about flooded intersections. While reports were scattered throughout the city, Brophy said major intersections affected were Crosby Avenue at Court Street and Parker Drive at Memorial Avenue.
Ruger Avenue and Kennedy Road also were flooded in spots.
Despite the temporary delays, there were no injuries or accidents reported as a result of the rainfall.
"Once the rain let up, everything took care of itself," Brophy said.
The rain also caused the towns of Fulton and Milton to impose slow/no-wake restrictions for their portions of the Rock River.
Walworth County, which got about an inch of rain, fared better. The Walworth County Sheriff's Office said it had not responded to any calls of flooding or weather-related accidents.
While it might have been a nuisance for drivers, the torrent was a gift for farmers. Area crops were starting to suffer from lack of rain and high temperatures. Jim Stute, UW Extension crops and soils agent, said farming soil hardened as a result of the dry spell, which means some rain might have runoff rather than soaked in.
"I was out in the country, and I was seeing it start to runoff, but a fair amount of it did get into the soil," Stute said.
The National Weather Service is predicting between 1-2 inches of additional rain between Thursday night and Saturday.
Stute said another inch would be enough to sustain crops for another three weeks, depending on the soil's moisture storage capacity.
Ann Marie Ames also contributed to this story
Jul 23, 2010 at 3:12 p.m.
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Walworth County fared better? We got almost 8" of rain in the last 24 hrs according to the neighbors rain gauge and have trees and tree branches down every wheres. Plus we lost power for 15 hours, and had street flooding. So don't think we fared as well as said. Spoke with a WE Engery employee this morning who lives in the subdivision behind us and said that there was a lot of damage all around the Rice Lake/Whitewater Lake area.
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