Hastings is no stranger to weird, random storms. Does Halloween of 1991 ring any bells? This was no blizzard, but the storm still caught many by surprise. The weather forecast had nothing listed for Friday evening in terms of rain, so the sudden deluge with the included winds appeared out of nowhere. Many reports from residents around town indicated that over two inches of rain fell in that short period of time. Officially, at Lock and Dam #2, the rain totals were listed as 2.51 inches over the previous 24 hours ending at 4:00 a.m. with wind speeds reported to be in excess of 60 miles per hour.
What followed was a busy weekend for city staff, especially those working in Parks and Public Works.
“We were out on Saturday as well,” said Cory Likes, Maintenance Manager for the Parks Department. “Just opening up the trails, so people could use the trails yet.” Crews spent about four to six hours that day clearing major debris from public park spaces, with efforts continuing into the following week.
Likes rattled off a long list of impacted parks: Jaycee Park, Lions Park, Tierny Park, CP Adams Park and Lake Rebecca Park. “Jaycee Park is the worst,” he said. The cleanup effort is a heavy lift.
“I would say 100-150 hours,” Likes estimated, when asked how long it would take the parks crew to get everything back to normal.
And that’s just the Parks Department. Public Works had their own hands full with road obstructions and safety hazards. Director Ryan Stempski explained that their crews were already out Friday evening due to a request from Xcel Energy.
“We had small crews out when Xcel asked us to shut down power and go on our generators. We save money for our electrical bills throughout the city,” said Stempski. That bit of scheduling luck meant their team was already active when the worst of the storm hit. “Once we got notified from the police department some trees were blocking roads, we were able to kind of quickly head over into those areas and get some of those main roads or higher volume roads cleared.”
They weren’t dealing with just a few branches either.
“I think the report was about 10 to 20 trees down in Hastings that affected our roadways,” Stempski said. One of the more visible incidents was a large tree on 15th Street that completely blocked off the road near the intersection of Prairie Street. Public Works responded quickly. “It was probably quicker than assembling our crew from home, just because we were out doing other duties at that time,” he said. He confirmed that tree was cleared within roughly an hour. As for what happens after a tree is removed from a public street, responsibility shifts.
“At that point, we follow our city ordinance,” Stempski said. “Tree ownership and maintenance in the boulevards or in private properties in front of a home is the homeowner’s responsibility.”
Storms with high winds and significant rainfall totals often cause tree damage and downed trees on private property and in city streets. As a reminder, residential and business property owners are required to clean up, cut, and remove fallen branches and trees from their yards and from the boulevard. If a tree falls from private property into a city street and the Public Works department clears the tree and debris to make the road passable, the tree and branches are placed back onto the property. Property owners are then responsible for promptly removing the tree and branches from the boulevard or street edge.
“The city’s role is just clearing and stacking, making sure there's no additional damage,” Stempski said. “That's why you see us cut it up and kind of clear it strategically out of the way, put it in a location where residents can come in and grab it and then bundle it up and get it ready for pickup through Tennis Sanitation or their own means.”
Tennis Sanitation, the city’s waste services provider, offers Curbside Compost Pickup and Yard Waste Collection during the season. Residents can either schedule a curbside pickup or bring their debris to the compost site at designated times. If you're setting out tree debris for pickup, make sure branches or limbs are no longer than four feet and no more than three inches in diameter. They must be bundled with twine or string. There is an added fee for curbside pickup, and unbundled or oversized branches will not be collected.
To schedule pickup, residents can call Tennis Sanitation at 651-459-1887. For those who prefer to drop off debris, the compost site is located at 425 31st Street E (enter off Commerce Drive), in the Minnesota Coaches Inc. parking lot. Through September 30, the site is open Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Wednesdays from 4 to 7 p.m. The same length and diameter restrictions apply.
Beyond the trees, flooding also made its mark. Lions Park briefly turned into a water feature of its own. “You had about two and a half, three feet of water out there,” said Likes. “When I drove by it on Friday night, it was already done raining and everything, but I could barely see the top of the bench seat for the kids in the dugout.” As dramatic as that sounds, it was by design.
“That’s a ponding basin,” Likes explained. “That’s what it’s designed to do. Capture that water and slowly allow it to distribute elsewhere.”
The basin worked. “I got back about 6:15 or 6:30, and it was full yet,” he said.
One particularly odd detail from this storm, according to Likes, involved damage at Jaycee Park.
“It snapped off the power pole down at Jaycee Park with all the outlets on it for the events we host down there. I’ve never seen that happen before.” Likes was not even in town when the storm rolled in. “I was still at a hockey tournament when my wife called me. She’s like, it’s bad. I’m like, what are you talking about? It’s sunny here. She’s like, no. Of course, that storm came out of nowhere.”
The lack of warning was something many in town noticed. “It really came out of nowhere,” he echoed. And while the city measured just over 2.5 inches of rain at Lock and Dam #2, some areas may have seen much more.
“A guy at work, Brady, said that he had almost six inches over the whole weekend,” said Likes.
That kind of quick-hitting, localized weather creates big challenges for city workers who are often already spread thin.
“We have a small crew and a lot going on every day,” said Stempski. “We work within our ordinances and do our part, and there are obviously some pieces of home ownership that aren't fun, but we try to do what we can to all share the load.”
That shared load will continue into the week ahead as parks crews finish clearing downed limbs and broken branches. Meanwhile, residents will need to take care of debris on their own properties. No major injuries or widespread infrastructure damage was reported, and for a storm that came with no warning, that’s a fortunate outcome. Hastings may not have seen a Halloween-level snowstorm, but this random summer squall still gave the city a jolt and kept cleanup crews busy all week.