Strange, dangerous January weather!

Yesterday I came home from work, a little tired, and decided to take a short nap. It was unusually warm all day - in the 60's - which is unheard of in Wisconsin in January. I had just fallen asleep when the tornado warning siren went off outside waking me up. I looked out my bedroom window and there was nothing there. No wind, no rain, nothing. It was still a lovely afternoon out there. I laid back down and the siren went off again. This time I went out the living room and checked out the front window - again, nothing happening. So, I thought the siren must just be broken or something. I sat down and turned on the TV. Lo and behold, all around me, tornado's were touching down in Kenosha.



Out west of I-94 a tornado that registered as an F4 touched down in the village of Wheatland taking out entire neighborhoods. Meanwhile, another tornado, an F2 was ravaging the north side of Kenosha. It hopped from house to house, taking out one here or there and leaving others standing. My sister Patsy lives in a house that was right in it's path. She literally watched the funnel leap from across her street, up and over her home and then down again on the next block. Her home was untouched. Two blocks down, two homes were devastated. Yet, at my house, nothing. Now Kenosha is not that big. The city of Kenosha is about 100,000 people and it's pretty compact. You can drive from one end of town to the other in less than 15 minutes. The irregularity of the path of these storms was unreal. They literally picked which homes they wanted and danced around the rest.



The damage is enormous but quite luckily there were no serious injuries and no casualties. The most serious injury was one man who broke his arm. There were some incredible stories - the 14 year old girl who just got home from school, answered the phone to hear her mother say "Get in the basement." and she ran for it. She just got into the basement and the entire house was gone. The same happened to another guy who just came home from work, ran in his house, grabbed his wife and baby and got into the basement just as their house was destroyed. Pretty remarkable that no one was killed.

Today it was in the 40's. Right now the temp is dropping rapidly and we are supposed to get snow showers tonight. So weird.