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BLOOMFIELD, IOWA -- A hail storm roared through Bloomfield, Iowa Sunday night.
On Monday, county officials, city leaders and residents could be found scattered across town cleaning up the mess Mother Nature left behind.
“It started hailing there toward 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. and for 45 minutes it just really rained and hailed, big hail," said Davis County Supervisor Dale Taylor.
Large pieces of golf ball to softball sized hail caused extensive damage across Bloomfield.
Traffic lights were broken and tree limbs were hurled everywhere by the wind.
"There was car windows that was broken out in this [storm], there was a lot of cars and trucks, SUVs that's got damage all over the bodies," said Davis County Sheriff Dave Davis.
One of the hardest hit buildings was the Davis County Courthouse.
Hail crashed through about 25 large windows.
"You’ve got to realize that these windows are antique things and so whenever you go replacing them, they go with the era, they'll cost a lot of money," Taylor said.
A crew worked quickly to patch up the broken windows.
"[We are] just putting plywood in the windows for a temporary fix, so no more water will get in it to destroy any of the records or equipment that's in the courthouse," said Courthouse Custodian Russell Lundstrum.
Broken glass and pieces of blinds could be found scattered across the courthouse lawn, but there were scores of other buildings with broken windows.
Across the street from the courthouse, several business owners, like Doug Dixon, spent the early morning hours sweeping up glass.
He was in his downtown shop when the storm began.
"The hail started coming and it was pop, pop, pop, pop and some of them were about the size of golf balls and we thought well we better move back and about that time the transom windows started breaking," Dixon said.
Cleanup crews, residents, city officials and county leaders will continue working together to fix up their hail-damaged town.
