Storms throw a damper on Coralville’s RAGBRAI celebration

RAGBRAI riders in Coralville had to take shelter as Friday night’s severe weather brought strong winds that knocked out power, downed trees and damaged buildings.

The storms moved in as Coralville was set to welcome thousands of cyclists for an overnight stop on the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa with a festival and concert by a rock band. Instead, campers were encouraged to seek shelter in City Hall and schools to ride out the storm.

“Due to severe weather we have had to make the difficult decision to cancel the Bush concert this evening,” RAGBRAI told cyclists over Facebook.

Reports to the National Weather Service included wind gusts up to 90 mph in Hiawatha, downed power lines and toppled trees in Marion, Shueyville, Swisher, Tipton and other locations. A tree fell on a mobile home in Wyoming in Jones County, a report to the weather service said.

The storm brought the worst of its high winds in a path from Cedar Rapids to Clinton, and there were reports — still to be verified — of a “probable tornado” at 8:41 p.m. near Andrew in Jackson County. The weather service planned to send out a survey team Saturday to check the damage there.

“Much of the damage reported by law enforcement was to trees and power lines, though several did fall on to structures,” the weather service reported.

Power was out to some customers for hours, but had been mostly restored overnight. Fewer than 200 customers across the state were still without power by Saturday afternoon, according to a national power outage tracker.

The city of Cedar Rapids announced it had taken reports of tree damage and said Cedar Rapids residents can report a public right of way blocking a street or driveway by calling (319) 286-5747 or submitting a report through the My CR platform at CityofCR.com/MyCR. Damaged trees on private property are the landowner’s responsibility to remove.