Our community came together in a powerful way after the storm! Witnessing neighbors helping neighbors was truly inspiring.”

Mayor Myron Bailey

Thursday, August 29, 2024, will be one of those days to remember for many Cottage Grove residents. While parts of Dakota County to the south saw an F0 tornado, Cottage Grove faced straight line winds that up rooted dozens of large trees and damaged several houses in the area. The damage was so severe, Mayor Myron Bailey and the City Council declared a State of Emergency on Friday morning and the city called in all available resources to clear roads the night of the storm
Severe thunderstorms as strong as the two different storms that hit the area Tuesday 8/27 and Thursday 8/29 are fairly easy to track but difficult to predict the severity of. Everyone knew the storms were strong and had a lot of energy to disperse, but what was not known was just how quickly that energy would turn into wind on Thursday.
One resident was coming home from his son’s soccer game when the storm crossed highway 61.
“We were on the freeway when the tornado hit, it was crazy.” He said. “We had to get home because our dog was home alone and when we turned the corner, we saw the tree on the house.”
That tree covered most of the roof of the house and there were several spots where the branches poked through the roof. Their neighbor had a couple trees down, one that did significant damage to their roof too.
The story was similar all over the area. The storm hit quick, the conditions changed even faster and there simply was no time to react.
“I was watching something on my phone,” explained Gary Larsen. “I didn’t even notice the power went out, but I heard all this rain then I heard this kind of thump sitting there. I looked out the back door and just saw tons of water obscuring my view. I tried to open the door, and the wind kept pushing me back. I came back a few minutes later and noticed a huge tree branch came down.”
“I just talked to my neighbor a week ago, and I think he jinxed himself, because, because he said, you know, I'm worried about that big branch coming down one of these storms,” Larsen said as he chuckled.
Luckily for Larsen, he had already planned on having a tree service out to clean some things up on his property, so, he should not need to wait too long for service for the storm damage.
“It came really quick. I heard no sirens. If there were any sirens that went off, the pounding of the rain on the roof and even on the side of the house was like, just loud,” added Larsen.
That was the consensus of everyone that spoke on their experiences with this storm, it happened fast, and they did not hear any sirens and they were not sure if that was because the storm was so loud or if they just did not go off.
According to information on the city’s social media, Mayor Myron Bailey said this:
“We normally rely on the National Weather Service to determine if we hit the sirens. Only for tornadoes and winds over 70 miles per hour. What was weird about this storm is we were in a severe thunderstorm warning and then it expired. It was after the expiration when the wind hit unexpectedly. I assume the storm was back building. I’m just glad no one was hurt.”
The last part of the statement was the most interesting piece about the storm. Not one injury was reported due to the storm that hit.
More than 20 different tree service companies came to the rescue of the area residents with one of the busiest being Kaposia Tree Service. Terry Turkl took a few minutes to give us a rundown of how things go in situations like the storm that hit Thursday.
Kaposia handles a lot of their work with a large crane each Tuesday and Thursday, so they already had the crane available to them for that day.
“With all the dead ash trees in the cities, we are always busy,” said Turkl. “This kind of thin sets all the regular work back so we can focus on the storm clean up.”
When a storm like this happens, many tree removal companies answer the phone 24/7/365 and Kaposia is no different.
“We were out here by 7:30 this [Friday] morning assessing the job and had the crane here by nine,” added Turkl. “Even with all of the tree companies out here, it will be several weeks before everything is cleaned up. We do the bigger things first like the trees on the houses.”
His assessment of the area was exactly what everyone knew it was, “it’s bad,” he said. “I’ve driven around this morning, there are so many trees on top of houses, a lot of old, established trees are down. The problem is, the ground is so saturated with water, they just uplift.”
And a lot of trees, big trees did just that. In just a few hours Friday morning, we were able to take almost 100 pictures of trees that were uprooted between 80th and 90th streets from Summit Avenue to Hadley Avenue and across Highway 61 behind Hy-Vee toward Jamaica Avenue.
Thursday night an estimated 4,000 residents were without power, and Xcel Energy was not certain when the power was going to be restored. Credit is due to the Xcel contractors and the City of Cottage Grove folks that worked diligently to get power restored as quickly as possible. Within 72 hours, most of the power had been restored to the area. The commercial customers like Holiday at 80th St. and Hadley Ave. lost power around 5:30 and had it restored by 9:30 that evening, just four hours later.
With the city activating their emergency headquarters on Thursday night, they had every available resource out opening roads and ensuring everything was safe for people to move about their neighborhoods as they could. Woodbury police and Washington County Sheriffs officers assisted in shutting down access to the area from storm chasers and gawkers while allowing residents to access and assess their properties with minimal interruptions. Fire departments from Newport, St. Paul Park, Woodbury and Lake Elmo also assisted along with Washington County Public Works. The city staff were done with the initial road opening process by 11:00 p.m. and they returned to work by 7:00 a.m. to finish the process.
"Our community came together in a powerful way after the storm! Witnessing neighbors helping neighbors was truly inspiring.” Mayor Myron Bailey shared, "I want to thank the citizens of Cottage Grove, specifically those in the hardest hit areas. I was able to personally witness neighbors helping neighbors this evening, while I was out checking the damage and offering help. I am so proud of our community! With events like this… We see the best in each of us!"
Finalizing the cleanup will take weeks and repairing the damage to the area homes will likely take months if not a year from start to finish. Some of the worst hit homes were declared condemned until an engineer could assess the current state of the home from a safety standpoint. That means homeowners cannot enter the property to retrieve needed items until there is a basic inspection.
The city will be conducting curbside pickup of private tree debris resulting from the recent storm. Please place your debris parallel to the curb for removal by October 1, 2024. Size of the branches is not a concern. City staff will be conducting periodic sweeps to collect debris. No prior scheduling is necessary, this is a free service to residents. Additionally, the city will be removing or trimming damaged boulevard trees located within the city right-of-way.
If residents wish to expedite this process and haul the debris away themselves, the Rumpca Compost Site will accept the debris free of charge, residents just need to mention it is from the storm cleanup.