MITCHELL, SD (Mitchell Now) — The clean up begins after severe thunderstorms brought winds as high as 75 miles per hour through the area Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
The City of Mitchell will take any downed tree branches at the landfill through Saturday without charge. The landfill is open Wednesday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The last chance to take advantage of the offer is Saturday between 8:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.
The landfill is located southeast of the city on 257th Avenue. Yard debris and branches must be taken to the landfill only. They will not be accepted at the compost site.
The winds pulled branches down onto power lines leading to outages, but those have been taken care of as of 9:00 a.m. Wednesday morning. The South Dakota Rural Electric Association outage map shows only two customers are affected in Davison County. There are no outages in Aurora, Hanson, or McCook Counties.
The Mitchell Fire Department responded to several calls during the storm, mostly in the 11:00 p.m. hour. Chief Shannon Sandoval confirmed the calls had to do with trees on fire, but he could not say whether the cause was arcing from downed lines or lightning strikes.