Because I said so: Tornados near Waseca and Austin, MN

The first three photos come from the photo gallery on the Waseca County News website. Photo above by Ginny Bergerson, second photo by Wes Ruedy, third photo by Phil Wala. First picture is the storm cell, second picture is of the tornado North of Waseca, third picture is the same cell I saw the beginnings of a funnel cloud in, and the fourth photo is a captured image from my lightning video #2.

Yesterday was an eventful and long day for me, as anyone following me on Twitter would have seen.

I started the evening off with about 25 or so people from our church at a cookout at Clear Lake Park in Waseca. We gather there each Wednesday for supper at 6:00PM

and the church provides the hot dogs, buns and condiments. While we were eating we were alerted by phone (plus by people walking through the park) that we were under a tornado warning - yes warning. The sky above us was still blue, but we could see the storms building both East and West of us. We were sandwiched between two super cells. Around 7:00PM after everyone when home, I ran up the street to our house (we live 4 houses up from the park) and flipped on the TV to see what was going on. TV showed a "hook echo" from the back side of the cloud that was quite literally just in front of our house. So I ran outside, down to the lake front to see what I could spot. About the time I got to the water, the tornado sirens started going off and the wind started shifting. It was mid 80's and dripping wet humidity, with a strong breeze out of the Southeast (rare for this region). Within 5 minutes it dropped to low 70's and about 1/2 the humidity. And sirens were still going off. I could see across the lake to the East that it was raining hard, and I could also see what looked like the beginnings of a funnel cloud, though I couldn't see anything that extended all the way to the ground. This was later confirmed by a trained spotter as a tornado. Apparently at this same time people at the North end of the lake in the clubhouse of the country club saw a water spout out on the lake as well. Additionally, there was a tornado sighting 5 or so miles North and a bit East of our house, on the road towards Morristown, MN.

Then my cell phone rings, not a number I recognize, but I pick up anyhow. It is my 8+ months pregnant wife who is in Austin, MN for a Gifted and Talented Teachers Conference sponsored by Hormel. She says that the hotel they are in just asked them all to take cover and put their heads down in the tornado position in the back of their conference room. She also informs me that she left her phone in the car, and is calling on a borrowed phone. And that she has to get off the phone immediately and she'll call later. Click.

20 or so minutes later I get a call, this time from my wife's phone, and she's doing just fine. A bit panicked, but the building and people are all fine. But they have no electricity in town, and the leaders of the conference she is at will not let her drive the 60 miles home by herself. So she asks that I grab an over night bag for her and come get her. She wants to come home, but also wants to be prepared.

The whole drive from Waseca to Austin was a veritable fireworks show of lightning. Literally not a moment where some lightning wasn't flashing in front of me. I left Waseca just at dusk, and it was dark out before I made it to Owatonna. What I could see though was as I got closer to Owatonna, the ditches became more and more full of rainwater. And there was standing water in the fields as well. And this during a period of drought throughout this region. I made my way toward Austin via Blooming Prairie on Hwy. 218, stopping to record some video of the lighting for a few minutes. As I passed through Blooming Prairie I could see into the firehouse, and all the trucks were out of their stalls. A short while later I passed all the trucks returning to the fire station from somewhere the direction of Lansing, just North of Austin.

As I got near to Austin, it became clear that the whole region had lost power. All the farms were dark, and there was no glow from the city to guide me in. As I crested a small hill, I saw flashing lights ahead on the road. As I got to the lights I discovered the road was closed to both Southbound and Eastbound traffic into Austin. I asked one of the support workers and he suggested some back roads that would bring me into town. So I turned around, and managed to maneuver my way down some narrow and very soft/muddy country roads West of Austin. Eventually I snaked my way into the West side of Austin and then blindly worked my way to the hotel my wife was in. It was very difficult to find the hotel, because there weren't any lighted signs to see where thing were located, no moon light, nothing. Pitch black. I managed to accidently find the back side of the parking lot, and after circling the building my wife saw my headlights and confirmed I was at the right place. It was spooky dark out, just a notch above the back of the cave with no flashlight dark.

My wife informed me upon my arrival that we are staying the night in the hotel. Great. I didn't pack anything for me, but she's 8 months+ pregnant, I'm not dumb enough to argue. So we get the last room with a king bed (I need a king bed BTW!) and one of the maintence staff gives us a handful of tea light candels plus a book of matches, and with his flash light leads us through the building to our room. It was a quiet evening, obviously. No lights, no AC or anything. We managed to get hot showers since I figured by morning the water will have cooled or run out.

This video is of the Austin, MN tornado:

This video shows the cloud rotation quite nicely:

BTW, there is nothing really special in these videos, but since I took them I figured I'd include them.

Video #1 - taken from the side of Hwy. 218. I tried to talk but the wind and thunder, and occasional car make it about impossible to hear much of what I was saying.