Another Wild Midwest Stormy Night! (1 Viewer)

[Jerry Klawiter]

It's always fun to watch mother nature from a safe distance,
But when it gets uncomfortably to close it really starts to make a person think why all this destruction.
Why do these twisters also seen to find the small towns and hit them dead on?
With miles of open land & countryside they seem so often to find those small towns and use their main-street as the path, Like again last night in both South Dakota & Minnesota.
As well in the recent past of St, Peter MN an F5, Siren WI or just last year Ladysmith WI.
Anyone here from Minnesota find water in their basements?
Thank god we have lots of sand here in Anoka county,
Even with the 5"+ of rain again last night we're still high & dry., I'm glad we have not received that 15"-20+" that just west/northwest of the twin cities has received in the past few days.
Get ready for the onslaught of mosquitoes & westnile!

 

[Ashley Seymour]

I woke up this morning to a story on MSNBC of a tornado in Buffalo Lake, Minnesota. This is a small farming community of about 800 people, 60 miles west of the twin cities. My wife is from there and it is where we were married in 1976.

My wife went back there on vacation a week and a half ago. My daughter, Brianna, left this Saturday to spend a few days before returning to Las Vegas where she is attending school and working in a restaurant.

Last night about 6:30 p.m. Brianna went outside to watch the rain storm. Being from Boise she doesn't get to see that intense a storm. My wife's dad has been in the hospital since December and only came home last week when my wife came to help and be with him for a couple of weeks. As the wind picked up my wife called Brianna in. A bit later her dad heard the freight train coming. He didn't want to move from his chair in the living room. He only gets around with a walker and tires easily. My wife took him into the bathroom and Brianna went to the basement. Just then the tornado hit and blew out all of the windows and knocked down all the trees around the yard. They are all ok, but a bit frazeled. Well not Brianna, who probably considers this another adventure.

Brianna has her video camera and spent yesterday going through the town and documented all the buildings. Now she has to weave around broken trees and debris. About 15 homes are seriously damaged. On FOX news I saw the Church - we were married there in 1976 - with about a fourth of it's roof missing, and in the background her dad's house.

Phones are out so I had to call my sister-in-law in Hutchinson to get the details. My daughters cell phone is not yet working.

Looks like they will be there for a bit longer.

 

[Brian Kleinke]

Crazy you mention Saint Peter... since that's where I am and was during the Tornado.

And it didn't bother to follow main street, it just went at a angle through town destroying everything...

And yeah I've got lovely puddles in my basement.

It's all crazy, just crazy :-/

 

[Ryan Wright]

Why do these twisters also seen to find the small towns and hit them dead on?

More intriguing, why do they always find the trailer parks and hit them dead on?

 

[Brian Kleinke]

More intriguing, why do they always find the trailer parks and hit them dead on?

Here in Saint Peter the tornado cut just the right path to miss both trailer parks on either end of town... Instead it just leveled a new contruction subdivision, did a TON of damage to Gustavus Adolphus College, recked a bunch of houses here and there all over town, and last but not least messed up down town...

All while missing the two places that would have likely seen far more deaths, the 2 trailer parks.

 

[Mark Schermerhorn]

The students at Gustavus were incredibly lucky that the tornado hit during spring break. It could have been much worse. Certainly the strangest storm I've heard of.

 

[Jerry Klawiter]

"Well not Brianna, who probably considers this another adventure"
I'm glad all are safe, She will have many stories to share when she returns to school
This has really been the first opportunity for our local ABC affiliate to try out their brand new 1 Million watt live radar.
Talk about cool looking deep into Nebraska or South Dakota,
This is not a compile of several radars but one very powerful live picture.
If anyone wants to check that out info can be found at
www.kstp.com
Or http://www.kstp.com/article/view/938...=eventview.tpl
Every time these storms take place it seems so many ask why this or that.
It's very strange how things play out with nature.
We have been very lucky this year for the most part this spring/summer in Minnesota, very few of these storms for a change, Maybe my homeowners insurance will stable off with fewer statewide damage claims. (not)

 

[Ryan Wright]

Here in Saint Peter the tornado cut just the right path to miss both trailer parks on either end of town...

All while missing the two places that would have likely seen far more deaths, the 2 trailer parks.

Wow. Major news organizations must be really upset.

 

[Brian Kleinke]

The students at Gustavus were incredibly lucky that the tornado hit during spring break. It could have been much worse. Certainly the strangest storm I've heard of.

There were still a few hundred of us there, it wasn't really a strange storm at all... just strong... and big (over a mile wide)

 

[Ashley Seymour]

I guess I had the wrong morning show on today. My sister and friends e-mailed to let me know my wife was shown on the TODAY SHOW. She told me yesterday that an NBC news crew from the Twin Cities stoped by to talk to her while she was cleaning up the yard. She will have to stay another week or so to help her father. They are all fortunate no was was killed or seriously injured.

 

[Jerry Klawiter]

The twister was rather large looking two miles west of town prior to it's direct hit, The video that ABC received from a private amateur looked rather large.
CBS also had video from another amateur while the twister was right in town, a Huge difference in the size once it hit town, The size was much smaller, This is reflected in the mostly F0-F1 damage that was left behind.
None the less, I'd rather not even have a dust devil on steroids knocking on my front door. I can think of many other ways to spend my summer, One is NOT storm damage cleanup & repairs.
I did this the past two years when I lost thousands of hardwood trees on my Wisconsin property.
Not very selective logging :frowning:

 

[Brian Kleinke]

It takes so much longer then just a summer to clean up and repair when a twister decides to pay visit to your home :-/

 

[Mark Schermerhorn]

Brian Kleinke:

It was very strange for two reasons. One was the time of year (late march / early april, forget the exact day), the other was the size of the tornado. Minnesota very rarely gets the massive tornadoes that they get in Kansas and Oklahoma, much less in the early spring, when it could still be snowing.

 

[Brian Kleinke]

O Mark, i'm not disputing that it was a very strange storm. How often do we get F4s in this area, at the time of the storm they had even thought it might have been an F5.

It was March 29, 1998, and it snowed on March 31st... At least the 30th was a nice day, gave everyone time to clean up some. I spent that day helping friends move stuff out of their totaled houses / apartments.

Only two people that I remember were killed as a result, one small boy (infant) who was thrown from a car and a elderly man. The fact so little lives were lost is also a miracle given the size of the storm.

 

[Ashley Seymour]

I picked up my daughter from the airport this afternoon. We have been looking at her photos and a video she took.

On Tuesday afternoon, she took her video camera and went around her grandparents house to make a recording for posterity. She went down town and videoed her mom as she explained about her home town. It was about 1:45, bright, warm and not a cloud in the sky.

After supper, as the wind and rain picked up, the tornado sirens went off. My wife's dad, is a bit stubborn and dismissed the danger and insisted on remaining in the living room. My wife and daughter began to worry and finally discussed the inevitable. They wanted to pick up grandpa and carry him down stairs. By then it was too lake. My daughter looked out to see the tornado about four blocks away. My wife told her to go to the basement as she was younger and she wanted her to survive. My wife took her dad into the bathroom. As my daughter went downstairs, she felt the house rise up. Then the sound of glass breaking upstairs and thumping. She was afraid the top of the house was gone, along with her monther, and grandfather. She repeatedly yelled upstairs till my wife opend a laundy shoot and told her they were ok.

I just finished watching her video as she came up stairs within minutes of when the tornado passed. Glass all over and the view out the front window of the church with it's roof torn off. They had a hard time getting out as all the large trees were torn and uprooted and blocking the doors.

My daughter did a good job the next two days of going around town recording the many homes that will have to be rebuilt. Only a few were knocked down, but even a little damage is enough to cause a home to be rebuilt.

Being in a farm community there were lots of front loaders etc. clearing trees. She has the obligatory smashed red car, and walked through the church which is open to the sky.

Looks like my wife will stay a few more weeks.