This sort of ironic and high-end damage to multiple wind turbines suggests tornadic cause; however, this instead was the result of an extremely severe thunderstorm cluster eight days earlier. Downdrafts reached 131 mph at two different weather stations in the area: a personal Ambient model and a South Dakota Mesonet site. With the turbines mechanically braked to avoid burning up the innards from excess rotation speeds, forces too strong to maintain structural integrity transferred to hollow, structural-steel towers, which bent downwind (consistently toward the northeast) like great metal straws. Sheared-off blades at height suggest debris impact, probably from other blades airfoiling into them. This was a deep zoom from as close as we could get in “golden hour” light, due to high-tension power towers and transmission cables still lying across the backroads. Fortunately for this purpose, the nearest, most densely damaged ones were spotlit temporarily in a sheet of late sunshine through clouds behind us.
2 S Holabird SD (7 Jul 26) Looking SE
44.4976, -99.6007