Washed-out road at the intersection of Highway U and Shiloh Road in the Door County town of Clay Banks June 25, 2024. PC: Fox 11 Online
(WTAQ-WLUK) — There were no tee times at Wander Springs Golf Course in Denmark on Tuesday, as uprooted trees and standing water covered parts of the course.
Similar scenes unfolded in other parts of Northeast Wisconsin, too, as the day broke following a line of intense thunderstorms overnight.
In De Pere, some residents woke up without electricity. Wisconsin Public Service crews and others worked to get the lights back on and the debris cleared by late morning into early afternoon.
While the wind toppled trees and took out power lines during the early morning storm, it was the water that caused the most damage.
Rob Robison of the Door County Highway Department says the water was pretty powerful.
County Highway U in Door County where it meets Rosewood Road was pretty beat up.
“Over the night they got five inches-plus of rain and everything washed out,” Robison said. “With that, the culvert couldn’t handle the water and it started washing out the road around it.”
The Door County Highway Department said the gaping hole was about 20 feet wide and 12 feet deep. The six-foot-wide culvert failed under intense water pressure.
The road was unstable and continued to collapse on Tuesday.
“It’s not a spot to come look at, really. The edges are unsafe,” Robison said. “It’s just like any clifftop-type thing. It can collapse at any time.”
Just a few miles south, still on County Highway U, Kewaunee County authorities were dealing with a similar situation.
“Really it started to culminate at about 6 this morning we stared to see the real effects of a lot of that cascading — literally cascading — water issues as it continued to move its way downstream,” Sheriff Matt Joski said.
While not as big as the Door County road washout, this culvert failure forced the closure of the road as crews waited for an appropriate time to start repairs.
“Mother Nature does things to us and we’re not in control and it’s a reminder that sometimes our things are exposed to the elements and need to be replaced and maintained and upgraded, and in this case the culverts weren’t up to the job that we had with the tremendous amount of rain that fell in just a couple hours,” county administrator Jeremy Kral said.
While the cleanup from the storm will take much longer than the storm itself, the fact only property was damaged and people are safe is what county officials say matters most.
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