Tornados!

As many of you probably know, since it hit national news, somewhere between 18 and 24ish tornados touched ground in Southern Wisconsin yesterday. It was crazy! We don't usually get very big tornados in this part of the country, but we might as well have lived in Oklahoma yesterday.

What you probably won't read about in the national news is that it all started yesterday morning, as most of southern Wisconsin was experiencing thunderstorms. What they call "walls of wind" (which I guess is a kind of tornado or winds associated with a tornado) hit Southwest Wisconsin destroying 20 barns and damaging many others in the Gratiot, South Wayne, and Shullsburg area in the morning. All day there were thunderstorms, etc.

Tornados started somewhere east of here (Madison) in the afternoon and we started getting reports of them in Spring Green, Lodi, Dodgeville, then moving onto Fitchburg, McFarland, Fort Atkinson (Missy and her grandma went to the basement and they are fine) and the BIG one finally in Stoughton around 6:30 or so last night. (See link below) They think it might have been an F5, but I don't know if that's confirmed yet.

Tornado And here. I think the articles say that they are not sure how the man died, but our local news said that he was in his basement with his wife and the chimney collapsed on him.

My aunt, uncle, and 4 cousins live in Stoughton. Luckily it was north of town and their home is south of town, so their home is fine and so are they. Actually it's Eathan's family, my cousin mentioned in the previous post. Apparently my cousin Adam (20) was out at the golf course and actually saw the funnel cloud (sweet) coming, but was able to seek shelter and is unharmed. Thank God.

Insert Random disclaimer: I know this is kind of a boring post, but I wanted to ask you to join me in prayer for the communities affected by the storms yesterday and just to give you a little report from someone in the area.

If a storm can have that much power and can do that much damage, think about the very real and physical power of God. I mean, with one word God can calm a storm. Crazy. The destruction that these storms caused is very sad, but it's also pretty amazing. Just thinking about the magnitude of wind, etc. I don't know... it's kind of cool and exciting, but definitely devastating all the same.

I got stranded at work until about 7:30 because we were under tornado warnings till then. When I drove home I was traveling (and looking) East, either just after or during the Stoughton tornado. I've never seen such huge, interesting clouds in my life. I wished I had camera. They showed them on the news, but it didn't do them justice. The chief meteorologist on my news station estimated them to be about 5,000 feet high, which I believe since I don't think I've ever seen clouds that high in my life.

At the top, they were so white that it hurt my eyes to look at them because they were so brightly reflecting the sun setting behind me. Most of it looked pretty "crunchy", I guess. It's kind of hard to explain... It wasn't like cotton balls, more like hand dipped ice cream, from top to bottom. As you moved down from the bright white part on the top, the middle looked like explosions of gray and gold, almost like footage of mushroom clouds, now that I think about it. It got darker and darker as it got closer to the horizon and it was very dark gray at that bottom. Toward the outskirts of the mass, although I couldn't see movement, it appeared to kind of be swirling, or moving, although it was frozen in time. It was really like this huge mass of this beautiful, enormous,... uh, clouds. It was BRIGHT white, dark gray, gold, kind of grayish-green in some spots, with a gorgeous blue sky behind it. I've never seen anything like it, and I don't think I'll ever forget it.