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The threat came as people in Sheboygan picked up the pieces from 70 mph winds and a weak tornado that hit Wednesday, wrecking a barn and toppling scores of trees, some of them onto vehicles and buildings.
With heavy rains possible through Saturday, “another very dangerous flooding situation may be developing for southern Wisconsin,” the National Weather Service said in issuing a flash flood watch for an area from the southwest to south central, east central and southeastern Wisconsin.
The weather service said the situation had many similarities to early June, when a series of storms produced massive downpours over several days and led to extensive flooding.
Thirty of the state’s 72 counties have been declared federal disaster areas since then.
Milwaukee and Madison both had the wettest June on record. Rains so far in July have been above average in both cities but nowhere near the records, said weather service meteorologist Tom Zajdel. As of Thursday, Milwaukee had gotten 2.89 inches and Madison 4.97 inches.
Still, this month’s storms have produced extremely heavy rains in some of the same areas that flooded last month, such as the 5 inches of rain that fell earlier in the week in part of Sauk County northwest of Madison.
“It’s real spotty. The areas in Sauk County and Columbia County have gotten a lot more rain than, obviously, Milwaukee and Madison have,” he said. “So it’s not like we’ve been in a real dry period for July.”
“Right now, a lot of the soil in southern Wisconsin cannot take a whole lot of rain.”
The flash flood watch was in effect through Thursday night in the southwest corner of the state and through Saturday evening in the south central region and southeast, where showers and thunderstorms were likely to continue.
Sunday’s forecast called for partly to mostly cloudy skies across the state but with a chance of more showers and storms.
Storm cleanup was in full gear Thursday in Sheboygan, where public works employees worked to clear the 75 to 100 trees on city property that were knocked over Wednesday.
Dave Biebel, deputy public works director, said more than 20 of the trees blocked roads when they fell. He said crews got most of the roads cleared by morning, but he estimated it would take weeks to clean up all the downed timber.
Sheboygan Falls Police Chief Steve Riffel estimated 40 or 50 large trees went down in his city, and about a dozen of them caused significant damage to homes. Four landed on cars.
The only injury reported was at Plymouth, where an 81-year-old woman was knocked over by a wind-blown door at Kmart and suffered a possible broken bone, said Deputy Police Chief Christopher Ringel.
At Camp Anokijig north of Plymouth, the winds toppled at least a dozen trees, and two of them landed on unoccupied cabins, said Jim Scherer, the camp’s executive director.
He said staff members had taken the 300 campers to shelter as the storm hit, and then they worked until midnight doing 65 loads of laundry to dry out rain-soaked belongings.
Sheboygan police got a first-hand experience of storm damage when a faulty manhole cover caused the basement of the police station to flood with about 2 inches of water, said Capt. Steve Cobb.
The storm knocked out electricity to more than 14,000 customers in Sheboygan County. Most had it restored by Thursday morning.
