May 25th 2008 MN

Posted by Rich

Really disappointed when we woke up and find we were smack dab in the middle of two moderate risk areas. What happened to IA? After looking things over, it looked like MN was going to fire early, around 2pm or so, and I really didn’t want to make the dash for home just to be late by an hour or two, so opted to take advantage of the pool, and head into IA later to chase what looked like some pretty good conditions there.

We hung out at the hotel until checkout, then started off into IA, planning on driving 100 miles in or so, then re-evaluate based on current surface conditions. Within about an hour, MN looked like it may hold off long enough for us to get there, so we made a dash north, hoping for better winds, and a shorter trek home after the chase.

After hitting Jackson, we saw the cells starting to fire off to the north and decided to watch for a while to see if the line continued to the south. No such luck so we decided to head for Mankato, only to find out 169 is closed. There went our quick north road options,

By then the cells were firing in IA, and looked like they may be drifting to the NE, so we took off down 90 again playing catchup, only to re-evaluate once we hit Austin and realized the cells were taking a straight East route, putting us too far North on the already tornado warned cells in IA. We then turned north, thinking that the cells near Faribault may build into something…. which they didn’t. Very nice tower, but nothing to show for it underneath.

And then headed for home in practically clear skies all the way up 35. Pretty obvious then that the northern cells sucked up any moisture that would have fed anything in southern MN.

Once we got back to Blaine, we did a quick tour of the damage areas. Found damage from 121st and Hanson, (we didn’t check any further to the West, initial touchdown was supposed to have been a mile to the west?) and followed the damage path all the way to Radisson where we turned around and headed for home.

We saw various levels of damage along the way, a lot of full size trees pulled out by the roots, light house damage, and were told that houses were pulled off the foundations northwest of Jefferson and 117th. Lighter damage on the East side of 65, partially due to lack of trees? Full size swing sets tossed on their sides, some sides pulled off the sides of houses and garages, a lot of garage doors pushed in including some on East facing houses.

Both pictures below are from damage East of hwy 65.

A couple of 2×4′s in the side of a house. Garage to the left in the picture is to the East of me. Talking to one of the neighbors, the boards were sticking 3 ft into the neighbors living room.

A table? that was picked up and thrown into this house.