Tornadoes, grapefruit-sized hail strikes towns; dozens of homes damaged
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Tornadoes, grapefruit-sized hail strikes towns; dozens of homes damaged
*Deadly storms rage in northern Plains
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:28 a.m. MT Aug 27, 2006
NICOLLET, Minn. - Deadly storms swept across the northern Plains,
bringing tornadoes that ripped roofs off houses and hail that smashed
car windshields.
In Missouri, most of the Jefferson City area lost power for about two
hours as the storms continued .
A day earlier, a man died after a tornado hit his home in Minnesota,
while in Wisconsin, lightning apparently struck a woman as she left a
supermarket. Hundreds of cows were killed or were on the loose.
Twisters, heavy rain and hail as big as grapefruit also struck the
Dakotas, stripping trees of their leaves, and power was knocked out
around the region.
Also Thursday, a flash flood in New Mexico killed a man and a boy
driving on a tribal road in New Mexico.
In Nicollet County, Minn., a tornado ripped roofs, fronts or sides from
farm homes along a 12-mile stretch of highway between Nicollet and St.
Peter. Utility poles lay along the road, and some treetops were sheared off.
Mary Rahm, 22, saw the tornado dip down twice from the clouds before it
hit the ground. That’s when she grabbed her newborn baby and ducked
under a desk.
“My 5-week-old son just made it through his first tornado,” Rahm said.
“This is wicked.”
'Nothing left' after storm's destruction
A tornado that hit a home in nearby Kasota killed a 90-year-old man,
said Tom Douherty, chief deputy in the Le Sueur County Sheriff’s Office.
“We have areas that you can’t believe a house was there. Crops — you
wouldn’t even know there was a crop there. Cornfields — there’s nothing
left,” he said Friday.
Close to two dozen residents were treated at hospitals for broken bones
and other non-life-threatening injuries, Le Sueur County spokeswoman
Roxy Traxler.
Hundreds of dairy cattle were killed or running free, causing car
accidents in the area.
An earlier line of thunderstorms dropped hail as large as softballs in
several communities, smashing the windshield of a New Prague fire truck.
In Northfield, hail damage to 11 police squad cars forced officers to
borrow vehicles from the sheriff’s office.
At least a half-dozen tornadoes raked across central South Dakota,
destroying farm homes and damaging power lines.
Jeff Miller said the storm looked like a blanket as he watched from his
mother’s home near Wolsey.
“I was worried about whether I was going to be here today,” Miller said
Friday, surveying the debris.
“That used to be a barn,” he said.
Neighbor Bill Timm lost nine buildings, including two houses.
“They’re not flattened, they’re gone,” said Kristi Brakke, Timm’s sister.
North Dakota had heavy rain, funnel clouds, and grapefruit-sized hail.
“It didn’t really hail all that much, but what it did hail was big,”
Stanton City Auditor Rick Honeyman said.
In Wisconsin, a 43-year-old woman was knocked to the ground while
carrying an umbrella and groceries through a parking lot in Waukesha County.
“I don’t remember hearing thunder or seeing lightning or anything,”
Kelly Owen told WISN-TV in Milwaukee. “It’s the weirdest sensation.”
Lightning suspected as cause of fire
Lightning also killed a dozen cows on a farm in Marshall, and strikes
were suspected of starting fires at a seniors’ apartment complex in
Kenosha and a home in Cottage Grove home.
Lightning was suspected of knocking out electricity feeder lines that
left about 30,000 homes and businesses in Jefferson City, Mo., without
power just as people headed into work and school.
More rain was expected in Michigan and the upper Mississippi Valley
southwest to Kansas and Oklahoma.
In New Mexico, heavy rains closed Interstate 40 for more than an hour,
and a man and boy died when their car was swept away as they tried to
drive across a ditch east of Gallop.
They were the only people in the car, Navajo Nation Police Commander
Johnny Johnson said.
And in New York, the city was under a rare tornado warning for about a
half-hour . No tornado touched down, the National Weather Service said.