Hailstorm in Minnesota

[lyle_from_minneapolis]

Saturday evening we had a tornado pass over us. It didn't touch down, but it did tear chunks of ice out of the upper atmosphere and send them smashing down into my neighborhood in the form of golfball-sized hail. No injuries, but plenty of damaged cars, rooves, etc. It was an 80 degree day, the storm came and went in less than a half-hour, and suddenly the streets looked like this:

The hail came so thick and fast that it tore most of the leaves out of the trees. I drove through streets carpeted with green leaves and white hail...and fog started rising up from it on this strange, warm and sunny evening. Very bizarre!

[phlemmy]

http://www.rickresource.com/phpBB3/view ... 5&t=381963

i feel your pain! the windows in my house are getting replaced today and i have 8700 ub damages to my car to get fixed soon.

[lyle_from_minneapolis]

It's possible I might get a new roof out of this...lots of raised shingles...but other than that, no real damage, just a Sunday's full of yard cleanup.

That sound you heard, that locomotive sound, means you are one lucky dude. That's the signature tornado sound and if you heard it, then it was way too close to the ground. Glad you're alive! In our case, it never touched ground and was losing strength when it passed over. But I've never seen a sheet of hail like this one. Looked like six inches of snow, all in about three or four minutes.

[johnallg]

Sure glad it passed over your neighborhood, Mark. It could have been a lot worse! A new roof and a little cleanup is highly preferable, no doubt you understand. I'll bet it was eerie to look it all over after - amazing that kind of weather can happen and pass so fast on a warm day. Go buy a lottery ticket!

[phlemmy]

Now when I hear the wind kick up at night, I get nervous. I hope that feeling goes away soon.

[lyle_from_minneapolis]

It was absolutely surreal to drive down that crunchy green and white road with the fog rising from it.

[winston]

I trust all is OK Mark. There's weird weather all over these days it would seem. A number of years ago just after I moved from Edmonton back to the coast a massive tornado went through Sherwood Park, about five miles from the house that I had just sold. It did all sorts of damage. It wiped out the Edmonton office of the firm that I was working for at the time and seriously injured quite a few of our staff. It took one of our D8 Cats and deposited it approximately 26 miles away as the crow flies. We never did find a lot of our other heavy earth moving equipment and highway tractor trailer units.

[johnallg]

That's amazing, Brian, when you think how much one of those weighs - 36,520 lbs. Points out another reason to respect tornados!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3V4uVloTQY

[winston]

John,

You should have seen what it did to our office. It completely obliterated it.

Here's an aerial pic of our office and yard a day or so later.

http://www.iassistdata.org/tornado/photo6.JPG

[johnallg]

Looks a lot like downtown Kalamazoo back on 5/13/80. A two tailed tornado wound its way through the heart of the city. We have a 9 story i-beam type glass-walled building that is still 8 inches out of square - one tail went through the top of it. We also had a 6 floor old brick building that lost the whole back of the building. It still stands. Totally amazing we only lost 5 lives, and it hit at 4pm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPNfT9qujVA at 1:21 and again at 2:27 you see the above building. At 3:59 (runs till 4:23) you see the building that lost the whole back. 3 of the people died there; one was sucked out of the store and the other two were below in the alley when the whole wall collapsed.

[johneek]

My wife was a little girl during the 1974 Xenia, OH tornado (F5), where two tornados combined into one and rolled down Main Street. She still remembers laying awake in her room listening to sirens all night long.

http://www.ohiohistory.org/etcetera/exh ... age01.html

[johnallg]

She still remembers laying awake in her room listening to sirens all night long.

I finally found a cure for that, John. Super insulate the house, close the windows, and run the air - you'll sleep through anything!

Interesting in a lurid way - another twin-tail tornado. Glad she made it through okay. Having seen family pictures of yours, I'll bet you are too.