8/8/2009 REPORTS: MN/WI/CO

[Jeremy Den Hartog]

Today ended up not being as good of a chase day as I was hoping for. However, we still ended up having a decent day. We got on a storm just as it was starting to get its act together near Mayer, MN. This storm traveled ENE into the northwest part of the Twin Cities. The storm produced a couple decent looking wall clouds prior to getting to Mound, MN. In Mound we headed just north of town where we inadvertently intercepted the tornado with our vehicle (the chase terrain here was very poor with lots of trees and hills). Needless, to say, that was an interesting experience seeing tornado vorticies spining up literaly 5-10 feet in front of our vehicle and having debris fly through the air as our vehicle was rocking back and forth. Thankfully the tornado was relatively weak at this point. We continued to chase the tornado (again through some poor chase terrain). We managed to see the tornado touch down at least 2 times with several power flashes. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure there were at least a few structures damaged due to the fact we saw power flashes and smelled gas a short time later...hopefully nobody was hurt. We ended loosing the storm as it moved further into the Twin Cities due to the roads/lakes/trees and the fact we ran out of daylight. I'll upload our video and post it here but we missed filming most of our accidental tornado intercept (we have some brief film shortly after it was past us)...

 

[Tony Perkins]

We caught a brief tornado in Plymouth, MN (Minneapolis metro area):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBH4xuCB6QI

Video grab:

 

[Tony Laubach]

Wanted to toss Colorado into the mix given the hail day experienced out here... unfortunately I had a pinched nerve in my neck that sent me packing it in early, thus I missed the softball reports out of the storm I would end up leaving..

None the less, I nabbed some good hail and minor flooding between Loveland and Kersey. I measured hail up to golfball size with the Loveland storm, then several other storms with hail between 0.50" and 1.25".

Videos and suck posted here...

 

[Melanie Metz]

Peggy and I (and Dave riding along) were on the tornadic supercell as it developed just West of the metro/ MSP area. We watched a large funnel develop as we followed the cell East....and then ran into the "road closed" sign! We had to drive AWAY from the meso for 5 miles before the next road to go S and then E again. Caught up to it in Wayzata again. Frustrating...but still an incredible chase! And the lightning was just amazing!

Here are a couple photos and youtube video link:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUEK4h6Zf4c

 

[Michael Stanga]

Pictures from Tornado as it crossed U.S. 12, had I not lived 5 miles from this area for the last 5 years of my life and driven the chase route hundreds upon hundreds of times I wouldnt have even attempted chasing this storm. Poor chase territory makes the rolling hills towards the mississippi look amazing compared to this. Had to approach from an unsafe direction also which didnt bode well with me but was happy to at least know the road network to make it safer to chase this event.

 

[Bill Doms]

Not a whole lot to say. The area the torn went through I have to drive for work every day and as Stanga stated, it is not very friendly to see anything much less a torn. Where it crossed highway 12 (which is 394 coming out of the metro) is actually a bypass with high walls and through a very heavily wooded area. Lightning show was incredible though.

Some pics and a fun 32 second video of 13 minutes of lightning condensed down, chase log, some thoughts, and even a rant or two

 

[Dean Baron]

I chased the storm through the Twin Cities and actually chased it through my hometown and some of the radar grabs in the NOW thread show the couplet passing just north of my house. Anyways, I didnt get any pics or good video but went back to Wisconsin on Sunday to check out the tornado damage just to the west of our position while chasing on Saturday. MPX officially rated it an EF1, 1/4 mile wide, 5 miles long. Would've been a nice looking tornado had it not been at night and rain wrapped.

Here's some pics of the damage north of Burkhardt, Wisconsin from the EF1 tornado that came through. This is in a development called Saint Joseph township along Walsh Road and Oakwood Lane, the only two streets in the entire township.

It's amazing seeing trees like this, there many bigger ones that did the exact same thing.

The house was on Bass Lake Road just north of County Road E and just east of St Joseph Township.

I took a drive east of Bass Lake Road and didn't see much additional structural damage. I did see one thing of interest which was a blown over John Deer trailer. Whether that was from the tornado or not I don't know.

Anyways, LOTS of tree damage, saw about 6 homes with damage, it all seemed to taper off east of Bass Lake Road.

 

[Dean Baron]

Video grab of the large wall cloud passing over my town of New Brighton, MN: