Seeing the funnel cloud barreling toward the small town of Mentor in northwestern Minnesota on Thursday, Wes Michaels yelled to his daughter working in the family-owned gas station.

“It's coming straight for us,” he shouted. “Get in the cooler.”

“In seconds, everything was on top of us,” said Michaels' daughter Heidi. She survived the storm, her father's body shielding her from the debris that killed him.

The tornadoes that ripped through northwestern and southern Minnesota on Thursday killed at least one other person, leveled a broad swath of Wadena and damaged numerous houses and farm buildings across the state.

An elderly woman from the small community of Almora in Otter Tail County died during the storm and her husband was taken to the hospital, said David Hauser, Otter Tail County attorney and spokesman. Brittney Schulke of Almora told the Daily Journal that her grandmother, Margie Schulke, was killed and that her grandfather, Norman Schulke, suffered two broken shoulders.

“We know that there are several other people who were injured,” Hauser said.

Heidi Michaels said her father had owned the Cenex gas and convenience store in Mentor for four years and wasn't supposed to have been working Thursday, his 58th birthday. He had come in only to check on her after hearing the storm warnings. When he saw the twister headed for the station, he ordered her and several customers into the cooler just before the store and four vehicles were destroyed.

“He saved me,” Heidi Michaels said.

The tornadoes that struck Mentor and Almora were the state's first fatal twisters in two years.

The storm that crashed into Almora also spawned a tornado that tore up about a 10-block residential area in nearby Wadena, ripping up old oak and elm trees, tearing off roofs and damaging buildings.

“It's a whole different horizon now,” said Randy Mohs, who drove through town after the storm.

The hours-long march of ferocious weather across the state also knocked out power in many locations, keeping utility and emergency crews busy as night fell.

The metro area was largely spared, with scattered reports of tornadoes and funnel clouds in the western suburbs, but no reports of serious damage. About 6,000 homes, mostly in the west metro area, lost power for a portion of the evening.

In Wright County, a tornado was on the ground north of Buffalo in a fairly rural area, but no injuries were reported, said Sgt. Peter Walker of the Sheriff’s Office. Damage was limited to downed trees and power lines, along with minor property damage, he said. A tornado was confirmed in McLeod County about 5:25 p.m., emergency management director Kevin Mathews said. “It was on the ground for a quarter to a half-mile, but it touched down in a field,” he said, adding that damage was limited to downed trees and grain wagons.

Multiple tornadoes and funnel clouds also raked Freeborn and Faribault counties in southern Minnesota. Buildings and other property near Kiester and Walters in Faribault County, along the Iowa border, were badly damaged. County Commissioner Tom Warmka said Kiester had been closed to traffic because live power lines were down in the streets. An 8-mile stretch of Hwy. 22 was also closed and many farms in the area were damaged, he said.

In Freeborn County, in the southern part of the state, multiple tornadoes hit, including one a half-mile wide, emergency management director Mark Roche said. Roche, who was out assessing the damage Thursday night, knew of multiple people taken to hospitals, but he didn’t have accounts of the seriousness of the injuries.

A shelter was opened at the National Guard Armory in Albert Lea for those in Freeborn County who lost housing in the storm, Roche said.

Travis Henderson, mayor of Conger, about 10 miles west of Albert Lea, said everyone had been accounted for “one way or another.” “Several farms are lost and houses are gone,” he said.

Fire departments from around the county were in Conger helping to round up pigs and cattle set loose in the storm, Henderson said, including one farm that had up to 3,000 pigs.

Wadena reeling

Wadena Mayor Wayne Wolden said the storm wiped out about a quarter of his town and left about 20 people injured. “Dozens and dozens of homes are flattened,” he said. “Part of the roof on the high school was ripped off and thrown across the street. The high school is damaged. The community center is gone.”

Luckily, the sirens in town alerted residents before the storm hit; otherwise there might have been more injuries. He and his daughter stayed in the basement as the sirens blared and the storm passed overhead. It took just three minutes, he said. “I heard a train just like they say,” Wolden said.

When the storm passed, he noticed his home lost only a few shingles. “But my neighbors lost their homes.”

The building that housed Leaf River Ag Service was leveled and an old two-story house that boarded students who attend the nearby vocational community college was destroyed, Mohs said.

“It’s cork-screwed across the street. It’s twisted like a candy wrapper,” Mohs said. “There are a lot of sirens, ambulances, police. There are helicopters flying. … It’s a mess.”

Joanne Ostlund, who works in the Wadena city offices, waited out the storm with co-workers. “There was a lot of damage,” she said. “My garage and shed are gone and one of our neighbors lost an entire farm site.”

Gov. Tim Pawlenty plans to inspect the damaged sections of the Wadena and other areas Friday.

In the nearby Deer Creek area, several farms were heavily damaged, said Deer Creek resident Kathy Hill.

“My brother’s farm is pretty much gone,” she said. “The barns are gone. The house is damaged.”

Hill and her husband tried to reach her brother’s farm, but roads were blocked. Then she tried to check on her sister in Wadena, but entrances to the town were blocked.

“The roads are filled with debris — 2-by-4s, metal from buildings, power lines,” she said. “We have no electricity. No telephone service. It was bad. It will be awhile before recovery happens.”

Hail up to 4 inches in diameter was reported elsewhere in Douglas County. Hail also dominated reports across southern Minnesota, with a report of 2 1/2-inch stones near Fairfax, about 100 miles southwest of the Twin Cities.

via 2 dead as tornadoes sweep across Minnesota.

With the storms over, benign weather is forecast to return to Minnesota on Friday and Saturday, with the Twin Cities expecting sun and highs of 86 Friday and 79 Saturday.

A tornado unleashed a “war zone” of destruction in northwest Ohio, destroying dozens of homes and an emergency services building as a line of storms killed at least seven people and briefly threatened the Northeast on Sunday.

Storms collapsed a movie-theater roof in Illinois and ripped siding off a building at a Michigan nuclear plant, forcing a shutdown. But most of the worst was reserved for a 100-yard-wide, 7-mile-long strip southeast of Toledo now littered with wrecked vehicles, splintered wood and family possessions.

Tornadoes Sweep Through Midwest

The tornado ripped the roof and back wall off Lake High School's gymnasium at about 11 p.m. Saturday, several hours before the graduation ceremony was supposed to begin. The school board president said one of the victims was the father of the class valedictorian.

Two buses were tossed on their sides and another was thrown about 50 yards, landing on its top near the high school's football field. More than 10 hours later, its right turn signal was still blinking.

Lake Township Police Chief Mark Hummer flew over the damaged area and said at least 50 homes were destroyed and another 50 severely damaged, as well as six commercial buildings. The storm fell over an area of farm fields and light industry, narrowly missing the heavily populated suburbs on the southern edge of Toledo.

“It’s a war zone,” Hummer said. “It’s pretty disheartening.”

Hummer said Sunday afternoon all buildings had been searched and everyone was accounted for. Rescuers were searching a wooded area and a field near the worst-hit portion of town as a precaution.

The tornado turned a township police and emergency medical services building into a mishmash of 2-by-4 framing and pink insulation. Hummer was talking to a police dispatcher by phone when the storm hit.

“She started saying, ‘The building is shaking,’ and then another dispatcher came on and said, ‘The roof just blew off,” he said.

The storm ripped off most of the building’s back half and wrapped part of the metal roof around a tree. At least six police vehicles – half the township’s fleet – were destroyed, and one car was tossed into the spot where the building once stood.

The storm knocked out emergency services for a short time, and all the emergency dispatchers and 911 operators had to be moved to a nearby town.

“When the people who are supposed to help you are victims of the storm, it does take you a minute to catch your breath,” Hummer said.

Those killed included a person outside the police department and a motorist, Hummer said. He said a young child and two other victims were from nearby Millbury, a bedroom community of roughly 1,200 about 10 miles southeast of Toledo. Hummer said two other people died at hospitals but he did not have details.

One of the victims was the father of Lake High School’s valedictorian, said Tim Krugh, president of the school district’s board. Krugh said the school has rescheduled graduation for Tuesday evening at a Toledo community college.

Neighbors said the house of the valedictorian’s family was destroyed, and all that was left was a basement filled with water.

More than 30 people in the Toledo area were hospitalized. Two adults and two children were in critical condition, said Mercy hospital system spokeswoman Gloria Enk.

In southeastern Michigan, severe storms and high winds ripped siding off a building at the Fermi 2 nuclear plant, causing it to shut down automatically, said Dan Smith, the public information officer for Monroe County. Investigators were inspecting the nuclear plant on the shore of Lake Erie on Sunday morning, and the plant was expected to go back into operation, Smith said.

About 35,000 people were without power but it wasn’t clear whether that was directly related to the nuclear plant’s shutdown or because of damage to power lines in the area, Smith said.

In Dundee, Mich., 11 people were injured after high winds blew off part of a roof at a waterpark, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano.

Tornadoes also were reported in Illinois. More than a dozen people were injured in Dwight, where about 40 mobile homes and 10 other homes were destroyed, Illinois Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Patti Thompson said.

The roof of a movie theater collapsed in Elmwood, Ill., about 30 miles west of Peoria. State Trooper Dustin Pierce said 150 to 200 people had been inside, but they had been evacuated to the basement and no one was hurt.

The storms left a trail of damaged homes in northern Indiana and two tornadoes were reported, but no one was injured. In eastern Iowa, buildings were damaged and one person was hurt when a tornado touched down in Maquoketa.

A cold front colliding with warm unstable air produced the storms that struck Saturday night, meteorologist Marty Mullen of the National Weather Service said, and that front was draped from New England south through the mid-Atlantic region later Sunday. The storm weakened as it headed east and a tornado watch for much of New England was canceled.

The day after the Toledo-area tornado hit, residents were searching fields looking for anything salvageable.

The storm destroyed Ronald Johns’ house and barn and flung his cast-iron bath tub into a wheat field, but his wife managed to find a wristwatch, still working, amid the scattered bits of their rural home near Millbury.

On Saturday night, Johns looked out the window and couldn’t even see the barn directly across the road. The chimney fell through the first floor as soon as the retired couple made it to the basement, pinning Johns with bricks until his wife, Jan, managed to free him.

Ronald Johns, 74, said they were lucky. “We didn’t get down there five seconds too fast,” he said.

Truck driver Carl Gooden, 54, said he, his wife and his adult son were sitting on the porch when they heard a roar and ran for the bathroom.

Wind tore off most of the home’s roof and ripped open the north side of house, exposing a bedroom and a closet where sweat shirts and dresses were still on their hangers. In the front yard, a sliver of aluminum siding from a neighbor’s barn was wrapped around a teetering telephone pole.

Gooden said his family lost two garages and five vehicles. The front yard was littered with decades of memories: a Loretta Lynn album, a porcelain lamp and a green golf bag were among the recognizable items.

“My heart sinks,” Gooden said. “I worked a lifetime for all this.”

But he wasn’t about to go in to retrieve items such as his wife’s jewelry or his NASCAR collectibles. His home was knocked 5 feet off its foundation and basement washer and dryer were all that was holding it up.

“It’s not worth dying for,” he said.

via 7 Killed as Storms Sweep Through Midwest – CBS News.

A tornado has killed at least five people in Ohio after touching down in Wood County overnight.

Among the dead is a 4-year-old child in Millbury, Ohio, as well as a man who was found dead in the street there, CNN reports. Two adults in a van were also killed in Lake Township.

The deaths were caused by a severe storm system that also injured at least 11 people in Michigan, where storms also shut down a nuclear power plant, according to CNN. The storm also ripped through Illinois and other parts of the Midwest.

Tornadoes have already killed several people across the country this year. This past spring, tornadoes tore through Mississippi and Louisiana, killing at least 10 people. Read more here on Indyposted.

via Ohio Tornado Death Toll Reaches 5 – IndyPosted.

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CLINTON, Ark. – Tornadoes ripping through central Arkansas killed at least one person and injured about two dozen others Friday, and more bad weather was possible Saturday, authorities said.

The death was reported in Van Buren County — about 75 miles north of Little Rock — where at least three mobile homes were destroyed, state Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman Renee Preslar said.

About two dozen people were hurt during the storms, but local officials who reported the deaths and injuries to the state agency did not immediately release the severity of the injuries or details about how the individuals were hurt, Preslar said.

Another round of storms, including tornadoes, could come Saturday, said John Robinson, warning coordinator meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Little Rock.

“Certainly, there will be the threat of severe weather (Saturday) and the threat of at least isolated tornadoes,” he said. “I do think we will have more severe weather.”

Search teams located a person believed missing in the wreckage of a home in Center Ridge, while extensive property damage was reported across several counties in central Arkansas, Preslar said.

Tornado sightings were reported just a few miles north in Culpepper, according to Arkansas State Police. A sheriff’s dispatcher said a sighting also was reported in the Oakland area, near the Missouri border.

Trees and power lines were blocking major roadways in both areas.

Robinson said a slow-moving cold front that moved into Arkansas from the west touched off the severe weather Friday.

“We had spotty thunderstorms here and there, and those are the ones — the ones that sit out there by themselves — that end up being tornado producers,” he said, noting tornado season generally peaks in April in Arkansas.

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The tornado fatality that occurred in Washington County on Friday, October 9th was the first death from a tornado in Mississippi in 4 years or since 2005.

Sixty year-old Sarah Smith was killed when a EF-1 tornado with winds near 110 mph flipped her mobile home on its roof.

Smith died after suffering severe head trauma.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, the last tornado fatality during the month of October in Mississippi -was over 40 years ago in 1967. (Harrison County 1967)

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This was also the first tornado death since May of this year across the country.

A total 22 tornado fatalities have occurred in the United States in 8 states, this year.

(Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky)

This is well below the 126 fatalities that occurred across the country in 2008 and the 3 year average of 91 tornado fatalities.

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ONTARIO, Canada -

Judy Brown admitted she was still in shock and mourning as she remembered her good friend, Bernie Jackson, a retired Neosho Junior High School principal who was one of two men killed by a tornado that hit their campsite in Ontario, Canada, Thursday night.

Brown said Jackson was “Mr. Education. Mr. Wonderful. Mr. People Person.”

Bernie Jackson, 65, who served as Neosho Junior High School principal for nine years, retired in the summer of 2006. Jackson, of Ponca City, Okla., and Stan Hollis, 79, were killed by a tornado that hit about 9 p.m. Thursday and destroyed two cabins in the camp area. The tornado was rated an EF2, with wind speeds between 113 and 157 miles per hour, according to Environment Canada, the Canadian equivalent to the National Weather Service.

Dennis Kinkaid, 66, was still missing as of Friday evening, the Associated Press reports. The incident happened at a fishing resort next to Lac Seul in northwestern Ontario.

According to the Tulsa World, this is the 23rd year for the men to go on a summer camping trip.
Jackson retired from the Ponca City School District in Ponca City, Okla., before coming to the Neosho School District in 1997.

It was then that Brown, long-time junior high school secretary, found herself working for Jackson. It was that year that Jackson and Brown became friends, as well as colleagues.

“I just can’t imagine this world without Bernie Jackson,” said Brown, who has worked for the Neosho R-5 School District for 27 years with the junior high school. “Bernie loves people, and I am saying that in the present tense because it is still hard for me to grasp. He loved his faculty. He was always taking good care of people. You could go to him as a sounding board for your thoughts. You could go to him for advice, and he would help you think things through. He loved the kids, and always had wonderful stories to tell.”

Brown said Jackson was a family man, as well as a man of education. He is survived by his wife, Marilyn, two children, and four grandchildren.

“He would always talk about his grandchildren, because they were always so special to him,” Brown said. “Bernie was always doing things for other people. He would be working late in the evening to make a big, huge pot of soup for the entire faculty. He was so fun. He very seldom got angry, and when he did, he controlled it very well.”

Brown said everyone was excited for Jackson when he retired in 2006, because they knew he would be able to do the things he enjoyed like hunt, fish and golf.

“He was also a wonderful cook, and he had a big garden every year,” Brown said. “He would bring food in the office and share them. He was just always thinking of other people. I have never worked for anybody who was more giving and gracious, and compassionate. We were a part of his family, and he loved us. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t respect him. I can’t say enough about how much I respected him, and loved him.”

Shirley Cummins, a current member of the Neosho R-5 School Board and a retired R-5 administrator who worked alongside Jackson, said he was one of the most “positive and compassionate educators I think I have ever worked with. He always had a smile on his face, and he always had something good to say about people. He has been a counselor, an educator, in human resources and he was excellent in dealing with people. He had many strong suits, but I think those positive people skills were his best.”

Cummins said she and her husband, Sonny, and Jackson and his wife, Marilyn, went on a cruise together the summer Jackson retired.

“We just had the best time,” Cummins said.

Cummins said Jackson was good for Neosho and the district, and Darren Cook, current principal at Neosho High School, echoed that statement.

“Bernie was a kind man, and he had a big heart,” Cook said. “He was always thinking of others. Why he came back after retiring in Oklahoma to be principal in Neosho is because he loved working with kids. He had a great love for students.”

Dr. Richard Page, superintendent of Neosho R-5 Schools, said he was shocked to hear of the news of Jackson’s death.

“Bernie was a good person and a good friend, and he always remembered us here in Neosho,” Page said. “We are sure sad to hear of the loss. He was a great educator and a great person, and this is a sad loss to all of us.”

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The Associated Press and the Tulsa World contributed to this report.

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Tornado cuts 3-mile-long path in Eagle Lake   By Julia Bayly Special to the NEWS PHOTO COURTESY OF SUSAN TARDIE A tornado that touched down in Eagle Lake on Sunday brought hail and toppled trees, including these that spared statuary in the Catholic cemetery. EAGLE LAKE, Maine — It’s official. The storm that blew through this northern Maine town Sunday has been declared an EF-1 tornado by the National Weather Service office in Caribou. “We marry up a bunch of data to determine a tornado,” Hendricus Lulofs, meteorologist in charge at the Caribou NWS, said Thursday afternoon. “The survey team reviewed the radar data, the recorded wind flow and talked with eyewitnesses.” When the NWS survey team visited the Eagle Lake area on Tuesday, it found a path of destruction roughly 3.2 miles long and averaging 100 yards wide. “It’s that length versus width that indicated tornado rather than straight-line winds,” Lulofs said. “It snapped trees, uprooted trees, and the way the trees were laying down in different directions [also] indicated a tornado.” Lulofs said the tornado had maximum winds of 110 mph. While not common in Maine, an average of two or three such events occur each year, mostly in the southern and western parts of the state, Lulofs said. In the Eagle Lake event, the survey team determined the tornado first touched down near the Pinette Brook Crossing around 2:15 p.m. Sunday, and was on the ground intermittently as it followed a southeast track, crossing Convent Road, Duprey Road and Route 11. No injuries were reported but along its path the storm destroyed hundreds of trees, an outbuilding, a transport trailer and a boat. At the town’s Catholic cemetery, large trees were uprooted and toppled onto several pieces of statuary, which miraculously escaped serious damage. Susan Tardie, a native of Winterville, was at her family’s camp on St. Froid Lake when the storm came through Sunday. “It was sunny and all of a sudden it started hailing,” Tardie said Thursday. “At first I thought it was someone outside trying to get my attention and then I saw the hail.” Soon afterward, a relative came to alert the family of the storm’s passing. Tardie said she feels very fortunate after seeing firsthand the damage at the cemetery as she and several family members had spent the previous day that Memorial Day weekend attending to relatives’ graves. “Thank goodness we were not there when that storm hit,” Tardie said. “But it was very emotional standing there the next day with other people and looking at the damage.” The last official tornado in northern Maine was on July 24, 2001, in Oakfield.

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There’s a great chart below, too.

Just one year ago, Mississippi was in the midst of a record year for tornadoes.

Sixty-eight tornadoes were confirmed from January to mid May 2008.

2008 went on to produce over 40 more tornadoes, for a record total of 109.

 This year,  only 35 tornadoes have been confirmed across the state through mid May 2009, which is significantly down from last year.

 2008 Monthly Tornado Count

JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC
12	19	11	12	14	0	0	0	24	1	0	16

 

 March and May have been the most active months so far this year,  with 14 confirmed tornadoes in both months.

 

 Despite a less active severe weather season, Mississippi is above average for tornadoes.  (35 confirmed)

The state averages 28 tornadoes annually.

The state has been above average in tornadoes over the last several years.

(This continuous trend of above average tornadoes has caused the overall average for tornadoes to increase from 24 in the late 1990′s to early 2000′s to 27 in 2004 to now 28.)

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Mississippi is transitioning into more of a summer like pattern, which is not conducive for severe weather in the Southeast.

In 2008, no tornadoes were recorded from June thru August, which is typical.

Severe weather becomes more confined to the Midwest and Central Plains. (tornado alley)

Church destroyed from a EF 3 tornado on March 25, 2009 (Magee, MS)

 

 

 

 Tornado activity begins to increase once again with the threat of land falling tropical systems along the Gulf Coast and during what is called the ‘Second Severe Weather Season in the late Fall’ across the South. (Fall Severe Weather Mississippi) (Tropical systems produce tornadoes)

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Fla. tornado damages 11 mobile homes

A tornado caused damage to 11 mobile homes and a vehicle but no injuries when it touched down in the city of Casselberry, just north of Orlando. The National Weather Service says the F-0 tornado, the lowest possible severity, touched down late Tuesday. Casselberry Fire Chief Don Harkins said that damage was “relatively minor,” and that total damage was estimated at $51,000. The most severely damaged mobile home had its roof buckle and side walls damaged. Two others had roof damage, and the remaining eight homes had siding or window damage. One vehicle was hit by a tree limb. Heavy rains over the past three days also caused flooding in some coastal communities in Brevard and Volusia counties.

 

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Tornado strikes in Madison County

By – STAFF REPORT

Observer-Dispatch

Posted May 17, 2009 @ 08:46 PM

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MADISON COUNTY —

A tornado touched down 1 mile south of the village of Georgetown late Sunday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.

The tornado, which touched down between 4:34 and 4:47 p.m., stretched 6 and one-half miles and carried winds of at least 110 miles per hour, said Brian Lovejoy, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service’s Binghamton office.

Those winds classified the tornado as a two on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which measures the severity of tornados, Lovejoy said. The scale ranges from zero to five.