JANESVILLE, WI : Wednesday winds topple semi, down trees and give wings to trash on Wednesday, March 8th 2017
An empty case of Keystone Light tumbled end over end down Norwood Road in Janesville on Wednesday, moving erratically as if it had just consumed its own contents.
A few blocks away, plastic bags flew across Kennedy Road and got trapped against fences or in tree branches, where they rustled fiercely in the breeze.
The wind howled for the second consecutive day in Janesville, bearing down with even stronger gusts that toppled a semitrailer truck headed north on Interstate 90/39 just south of Janesville.
The morning crash closed both northbound lanes for a little over an hour. The truck was empty, making it more susceptible to the wind, but nobody was injured, a State Patrol spokeswoman said.
Jim Tropp of Janesville was traveling three cars behind the semi when it started teetering back and forth. He figured something was about to happen, so he slowed down to avoid getting into an accident, he said.
The trailer then lifted off the ground and flipped sideways.
“It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my entire life,” Tropp said. “It was like somebody lifted it right on its head. I'm very surprised the guy wasn't injured.”
Tropp couldn't see whether any cars swerved to avoid being hit by the truck. Several people immediately responded to the driver, who was uninjured, he said.
A man in the village of Walworth avoided major injury when a tree fell on top of him Wednesday morning. Walworth Police Chief Andrew Long said the man was not taken to a hospital, but he would not comment on the extent of the man's injuries.
The Walworth County Sheriff's Office responded to 14 calls for downed trees, six for debris in roads and two others for downed utility wires, Capt. Dave Gerber said.
The Rock County Emergency Management Bureau could not be reached for comment.
Janesville officials handled four calls for downed trees Wednesday and one Tuesday, with additional calls about fallen branches, according to information provided by Operations Supervisor Bill Brandl.
Other effects of the wind were more innocuous. Airborne trash was a common sight, especially near Kennedy Road, which is east of the city landfill.
Henry Londo works at Century 21 on Kennedy Road. He has seen his fair share of plastic bags swirling outside his office before, but Wednesday was worse than normal.
“This is probably one of the most extreme amounts of trash I've seen blowing around out there,” Londo said. “I don't know how they're going to get it out of the trees in that area or if they're even going to try.”
The city landfill does what it can to mitigate the effects of high winds. It shifted its operations Tuesday to lower elevations to lessen the likelihood of garbage getting carried away, said Mandy Bonneville, solid waste manager.
The landfill will shut down in extreme conditions because trash blows around the most when trucks are actively emptying. But the landfill bustled Wednesday, with a constant flow of garbage trucks coming in and out.
Moving the dumping ground to a lower spot in the landfill might have helped, but it didn't completely counter Mother Nature.
Plastic bags and wrappers flew against the side of a hill overlooking the landfill, and some made their way over the summit.
City employees and temporary workers contracted by the city will spend the next few days picking up loose trash surrounding the dump, Bonneville said.
Winds in southcentral Wisconsin reached sustained speeds of 40 mph and gusted up to 60 mph in some locations Wednesday, said meteorologist Rudy Schaar of the National Weather Service.
The high winds were caused by narrow pressure gradients between high and low pressure systems, Schaar said. The systems deviated Wednesday evening, ending the two-day onslaught of fallen trees, toppled trucks and tumbling beer cases.
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Wednesday winds topple semi, down trees and give wings to trash