Wild storm stories people tell you

[Susan Strom]

Strangers, acquaintances, people newly introduced, often have some wild tales to tell. Even small talk often leads to a storm story, and a lot of people have them.

Lastnight about 15 state parks people and I went to dinner in a small Arizona mountain town. Over Mexican food, we were all getting introduced after a day in a canyon there. One woman told me a crazy story that took place in Wisconsin. Around Labor Day in 2002, she had gone to Northern Wisconsin for her mother's funeral. The family was all meeting in a small town there where some of them still resided.

Two days after returning home she received unbelievable news that right after they all left, a tornado had tracked all through the downtown of the small community. She was talking about the Ladysmith Tornado of 2002. Apparently the twister mowed right through downtown for about a mile. Her relatives phoned each other and couldn't believe it, thinking there was some mistake. But it was true, and not uncharacteristic for Northern Wisconsin summers. Some of buildings that were damaged in Ladysmith had been standing for over 125 years, she said. I googled the tornado. The Ladysmith Tornado was an F3 twister that plowed right through the small town's main street. Ladysmith's population is less than 4,000.

In casual conversation, what storm stories do people tell you?

 

[Andrea Griffa]

I spoke with a friend who live in Greensburg that told me something about the Greensburg tornado. He focused his story upon the power of the inflow of the EF5 tornado. Before the tornado passed over his head and hit Greensburg, he related that the inflow of the supercell was something incredible that ho couldn't describe. Then the tornado came and did go on the Northern part of Greensburg. Then the wind did calm down and a new tornado touched down, as he said, and the second inflow was still stronger than the first one. Scott(my friend) told me that he couldn't explain how much that wind was powerful because it's simply devastating and he believed that was nearly stronger than the same tornado. The noise was simply amazing and he thinks to have experimented the most powerful wind that a man can survive.