Powerful winds and pounding hail ripped through area farm fields, leaving scattered damage Wednesday night.

"There've been some soybeans stripped of their leaves due to the hail, and there's some corn that's pretty flat," said Stan Sims, director of the Lake County Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service in Crown Point.

The storm hit some places and not others in rural Lake County, Sims said.

"I think it was scattered enough that there wasn't widespread damage."

Betty Kingma surveyed the scene from the window of her Wheatfield area farm house Thursday morning.

"We got a mess," she said.

The storm packed a punch but left a picturesque calling card.

"The wind was so strong it caved in our huge, 1-year-old grain bin," Kingma said. "Then it picked up the roof and politely propped it on the side of another building. It looks like a big umbrella."

Hail pummeled crops in some parts of Porter County, said Todd Hutson, Porter County Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service agent.

Bruised and weakened stalks could be vulnerable to fungal infections later on, Hutson said.

Damage caused by the storm will have to weighed against the benefits of rainfall in what for some farmers had been a dry growing season, Hutson.

"It may come out even," he said.