Powerful Storms Rip Through Utah

Powerful Storms Rip Through Utah


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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The storms snapped power lines from Layton to Logan and pelted 140 bicycle racers in southern Utah with heavy raindrops.

Parts of Utah were still under a flood watch Sunday, a day after the devastating storms. Garfield County spokeswoman Rebecca Bronson said flooding in Tropic damaged 30 homes and businesses.

"It's the life of a farmer," Cache County farmer Ronald Jensen said Saturday as the wind blew loose irrigation pipes across his alfalfa field and Highway 23.

It came after a lightning storm Thursday knocked three people off a porch and set the home ablaze.

"It was hit by a tremendous bolt of lightning," said fire marshall Scott Martin of the explosion in Franklin, Idaho, just across the Utah border. Robert Moser broke a hand and was treated for cuts and abrasions along with Ezra Frandsen and Roger Griffeth.

Despite the monsoonal weather, the three-stage Tour de Parowan Gap bike race was completed Sunday, featuring cyclists from novice racers to such professionals as Olympian Carl Swenson and Burke Schwindlehurst of Hurricane, Utah.

In Wellsville, residents fired up chain saws to clear tree limbs that dropped at Center and Main streets. As in Mendon, wind and runoff from the Wellsville Mountains uprooted trees, street signs and a trampoline that was blown into a tree.

Katie Jaggi made the best of the power outage, using a Coleman propane stove to stir a broth of carrots, potatoes and steak just inside her garage.

"This is our contingency plan," she said, as her sons dribbled a basketball on slick cement.

In Provo, storms brought marble-sized hail and winds of up to 54 mph blew over Utah County, said David James, the Brigham Young University weather station overseer.

"It was the largest amount of rainfall in some areas since the storm of June 23-24," James said.

Saturday's storms left about 18,000 customers without power in Davis, Weber, Morgan, Box Elder and Cache counties, Utah Power spokesman Dave Eskelsen said.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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