Fierce winds plagued Iowa Wednesday night, causing three semi wrecks, one of them fatal.
The fatality happened in Butler County, Iowa on Highway 57 at approximately 5:38 p.m.
According to KWWL, 70-year-old James Arthur Budlong was driving on Highway 57 when strong winds flipped his tractor trailer and trapped Budlong inside.
Budlong died in the accident.
Later that evening at around 6 p.m., Paul Sommerfeldt was driving his rig on Highway 188 in Bremer County when high winds forced his trailer to tip over and fall into the ditch alongside the road.
Sommerfeldt was not injured from in the incident.
That same evening, James Martindale, who works for Hennick Trucking, was driving on Highway 20, west of Dike, when “I saw the clouds in the distance coming towards me…. And all of a sudden the big wind just came out of nowhere,” he said.
Martindale’s empty livestock trailer flipped in the 80 miles per hour winds, but Martindale was able to exit the cab of his truck safely.
“Definitely makes you stop and think that at any point in time anything can happen, you know,” Martindale said.
Martindale urged others to pull over and wait it out if ever the weather makes them uncomfortable.
