Agriculture Commissioner Says Storm Impact on North Dakota Tremendous

(Dan Koeck/For the North Dakota Monitor)

(North Dakota Monitor) – A severe weekend storm that claimed three lives also caused devastating damage to North Dakota’s agriculture industry.

Total damage is still being assessed from the widespread storm, which included a tornado near Enderlin that killed residents Michael Dalton Dehn, 73, Katherine Ann Pfaff-Dehn, 73, and Marcario Machuca Lucio, 89.

Officials were learning more about the impact of multiple tornadoes, hail and straight-line winds, with gusts reported to the National Weather Service exceeding 100 mph.

“It went all the way from southwest of Dickinson and just rolled across the state in different areas where supercells popped up,” North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said. “And it may not have been continuous, but it was continuous enough.”

Gov. Kelly Armstrong declared the storms a statewide disaster,  activating the state’s emergency plan.