Hurricane-Force Winds Slam South Dakota This Week

Storms have been rolling though South Dakota all week and with those storms came a lot of high winds. Wind gusts this week were recorded higher than hurricane force on 3 different days.

As I was looking through the NOAA Storm Prediction Center page which shows storm reports, I noticed that there were several in italics. This denotes the strongest gusts, which are 65+ knots or more. If these speeds were sustained winds they would be categorized as hurricane strength. Wind speeds of 65 knots or 74.8 mph or more were reported several times this week as storms have moved through the state.

I had to go all the way back to last Friday to find a day with no storm reports in South Dakota, it's been a busy weather week for the forecasters around the state. Sunday was more of a hail event as some hail up to the size of softballs fell in Parmelee and Rosebud Counties. There was also an 81 mph wind gust on Sunday in Jerauld County. Tuesday there was one report of 75 mph in Sully County. There were plenty of other wind reports throughout the week as well, below that 74 mph threshold.

What was the highest wind speed reported this week?

Wednesday brought the largest number of high wind reports though, as storms rolled through in the morning. I saw wind reports from Lyman County up to 80 mph and Beadle County of 82 mph. I was also able to capture what the radar looked like during that wind event in Beadle County. If you can't see it, Huron, where the wind report came from, is under that red section on the middle right part of the map.

The likelihood of severe storms is lower for the rest of the week, but some storms are still possible. There could be more chances for hurricane-force winds, though that seems pretty unlikely for the rest of the week.