© Samantha Hernandez/Door County Advocate Growing corn shorn from its stalks along Walker Road in the town of Sevastopol after a localized hailstorm ravaged crops Monday night.
Matt Stasiak, an agricultural researcher, tells the Door County Advocate the hail crushed cherry trees, grapevines, winter wheat, corn and other crops in Sevastopol on Monday night.
"A lot of foliage was stripped right off the cherry and apple trees," he said. "I saw some corn that had been ripped down to the stalks."
Stasiak also said five or six unfinished experiments at the Peninsular Agricultural Research Station were ruined. His team will have to wait until next year to repeat them.
A farmer tending to 60 acres of corn said the storm reduced the crop to one foot tall from four feet. The farmer said he remembers a similar hailstorm that hit the area 51 years ago, but it didn't leave behind "snowbanks" like the one on Monday night.
An orchard manager said about 10 of her 15 acres of apple trees were ruined.
The sheriff's department says the grape-sized hail was about 3 to 4 inches deep in some spots. Snowplows were used to clear hail from roads.
State and federal disaster relief will likely be unavailable to farmers since a small area was affected.
Most growers have insurance against such storms.
A photo posted on Facebook by the Door County Sheriff’s Department shows 3-4 inches of hail on West Dunn Road after a storm passed through the town of Sevastopol north of Sturgeon Bay on Monday night.
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