Northwest Iowa counties the latest hit by weather-related disasters

An emergency disaster proclamation for northwest Iowa issued this week by Gov. Terry Branstad represents the latest in a series of weather-related disasters that have touched every part of the state.

An Environment Iowa Research & Policy Center report released Friday found that every Iowa county has been hit by at least one federally declared weather-related disaster since 2007.

This week, it was 10 northwestern Iowa counties that sustained damaging winds, heavy rains, thunderstorms and freezing rains that caused damage to public and private property, power outages from downed power lines and poles, and a large amount of debris.

Counties included in the proclamation are Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, Kossuth, Lyon, O'Brien, Osceola, Palo Alto, Plymouth and Sioux.

Branstad's proclamation allows state resources to be used to respond to and recover from the effects of these storms, including for removal of debris and wreckage on publicly or privately owned land that may threaten public health and safety, or public and private property.

The latest weather-related emergency comes as much of Iowa is still suffering from this past summer's drought that left Iowa's farmers with $1 billion in crop damages, the Environment Iowa Research & Policy Center reported Friday. It found that weather-related disasters are already affecting hundreds of millions of Americans, and documents how global warming could lead to certain extreme weather events becoming even more common or more severe in the future.

“Millions of Iowans have endured extreme weather causing extremely big problems for Iowa's health, safety, environment and economy,” said Amelia Schoeneman, state associate with the center, which is dedicated to protecting our air, water and open spaces. The emergencies highlight the need to cut dangerous carbon pollution now.

The report, “In the Path of the Storm,” examined county-level weather-related disaster declaration data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for 2007 through 2012. The complete county-level data can be viewed through an interactive map.

Every weather event is now a product of a climate system where global warming “loads the dice” for extreme weather, though in different ways for different types of extreme weather, Schoeneman said.

“Extreme weather is happening, it is causing very serious problems, and global warming increases the likelihood that we'll see even more extreme weather in the future,” she said.

The Environment Iowa Research & Policy Center called on decision-makers at the local, state and federal level to cut carbon pollution by expanding efforts to clean up the largest sources of pollution, shifting to clean, renewable energy, using less energy overall, and avoiding new dirty energy projects that make the carbon pollution problem even worse.