27 July 2002

Example 2: 27 July 2002 Park Falls Area Wind Damage -- Charted Data and Radar

About once every seven days in July of 2002, a line of severe storms would sweep across this part of the state. Each event landed almost squarely on the weekends. We have a storm, spend all week cleaning up after it, and then another storm would occur all over again. The area lost alot of trees, and several didn't survive around our house. The last of the several storms that hit us, occurred on 27 July 2002, the last Saturday in July. This is when the town I live in has it's annual parade and carnival at the park.

We knew there were storms headed our way, but by this time we were a little tired of them, and didn't pay too much attention to the threat. I had to be out the door at 5pm to be at an appointment I had at 5.30pm. So at 4:30pm I was getting ready, with my Lightning Sensor on. All day the storms were building across MN, so I was getting weak signals all day.

I was upstairs, forgot something in the basement (where my Lightning Sensor is located), at which I glanced at before I'd run back upstairs, hop in my car, and be down the driveway. But what I saw made me stop dead in my tracks: "Possible Tornado". Oh shit.

My father was upstairs, so I ran to the bottom of the steps to yell for him to come down. As I reached the bottom step, I felt as well as heard a wall of wind hit the house, and then the wind started to whine and increase from a deep sound to a higher pitch. I will never forget how the wind started whining.

The whining of the wind put me on extra high alert and I proceeded to yell at my father. I remember my words "Get down here NOW!" Hearing that, his head popped into the stairwell and he ran down the stairs. I asked him what he was doing up there when he should clearly be downstairs. He replied that he was trying to close the windows in the living room but couldn't - which is very interesting. We have crank windows in that room, which faces south, and the wind was from the south. So in theory, the wind should have helped push the windows closed as he was cranking them shut. But no.

Standing there for a few minutes, we heard alot of wind and some noise. Once the worst of it seemed to pass, and we consulted the Lightning Sensor, we slowly edged up the stairs. It was still pouring very hard, but through the rain we could see many branches lying across the yard. I also saw something that looked remarkably like our small satellite dish in the ditch by the mailbox.

Waiting several more minutes allowed the rain to stop, which allowed us to go out and survey the damage. We lost two trees in the yard that I liked. A large White Pine that provided shade in the backyard, and a Wild Cherry tree that the birds liked. Both cracked off at the base. The White Pine was 28" diameter and the Wild Cherry was 11" diameter. Also, in a stand of White Spruce on the SE side of the house, three had the top halves broken off.

Looking closer at what lay in the ditch, it was the metallic lid off an oil drum that our neighbors across the road used as a burning barrel. The lid managed to fly about 600 feet and landed in our front yard. Another 50 feet would have put it through the picture window in our living room.

I managed to take pictures, but between the rain and dusk descending, they didn't turn out well enough to post.

Looking both ways down the road in front of our house, we could see trees across the road. So my father and I grabbed the chain saw and hoped in the truck and started cutting the road open towards town. There were only two trees that were across the road, but we saw several down in people's yards.

Our neighbor to our west (in a trailer house) was luckily not home at the time, because the branches of several trees were lodged across their deck, along with upturned patio furniture.

Below is the Lightning Sensor's charted recording of the event. The red lines were what the software analyzed as a possible tornado. Speaking later with relatives that live a couple miles north of us who were out in their yard watching this storm, we were told they saw what looked like three small funnel clouds descending from the clouds to their south.

Based on the damage we saw (there was a little rotation to the debris) and the whining sound I heard, we believe one of those possible funnel clouds was directly above our house. If it had touched down as a tornado, we think it would have been in the middle of our house.

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Radar from 4pm CDT (16:00)

Radar from 5pm CDT (17:00)

The white 'X' marks my lightning sensor in NW Wisconsin.