The first tornado to hit Wisconsin in February was spotted
EVANSVILLE, Wis. — The first tornadoes ever recorded in Wisconsin, in the usually frigid month of February, tore through mostly rural areas on a record-breaking day for warmth, providing the perfect scenario for the kind of severe weather that normally occurs in late can be seen in spring and summer.
The storms left behind a slew of destruction, including dead and missing cows, blown-off roofs of houses, destroyed warehouses and barns, wrecked vehicles and shattered windows.
At least two tornadoes have been confirmed south of Madison and the National Weather Service is investigating reports of several more stemming from storms that ripped through the southeastern part of the state Thursday around 5:30 p.m., meteorologist Taylor Patterson said.
One confirmed tornado near Evansville was a βhigh-endβ F2, the weather service said. These tornadoes are described as ‘significant’, with wind speeds of 220 km per hour. Another tornado that touched down near Judah was an F2. These tornadoes are considered “significant” with maximum wind speeds of 110 miles per hour. Surveyors were still assessing the damage late Friday afternoon, the weather service said.
There were no reports of significant injuries. Local emergency management officials reported dozens of buildings, power lines and other structures damaged during the storm that formed in eastern Iowa and petered out near Milwaukee. The temperature was a record high for the date: 59 degrees (15 degrees Celsius).
Connie Arndt, 72, stood in disbelief Friday among the rubble of a rental home she owned outside Evansville.
βWe are all in denial that this is February,β she said. βIt’s an absolute shock.β
Matt Artis, 34, said he had just gotten out of the shower at his family’s ranch in Porter on Thursday night when he heard a “big bang.” He took his mother and their dog, Dixie, to the bathroom just as the tornado hit. He said he came out of the bathroom, looked up and saw nothing but the night sky. The tornado had ripped the roof off their house.
Outside, the tornado had reduced the farm’s 103-year-old barn to rubble and scattered hundreds of feet of debris across the fields. He said Friday morning that he found one of his cows dead in the barn and that 10 more were missing.
Artis appeared in shock and was wandering around the farm when a small army of neighbors arrived and offered to help him find his cattle. At one point he threw up his hands, walked away and said, βI don’t know.β
Hunter Oller of Brodhead, Wisconsin, and his friend were fishing when the storm arrived. They started driving home, but stopped in the town of Magnolia, where they saw two partially formed tornadoes and one tornado that appeared to touch the ground. Oller, 20, pulled out his cell phone.
βI was impressed,β he said.
Patterson, the meteorologist, said the storm resembled those typical for Wisconsin in the late spring and summer.
βIt’s just unusual in the sense that it doesn’t normally happen in February,β she said.
Winter tornadoes are virtually unheard of, especially in the northern states.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that between 1998 and 2022, 31 states across a wide swath of the country, from Washington state in the northwest to New Mexico in the south, Wisconsin in the Upper Midwest and Maine in the northeast, did not . I’m not reporting any tornadoes.
But winter tornadoes β like the one in Wisconsin β are likely to be stronger and stay on the ground longer with a wider swath of destruction in a warming world, a 2021 study found. That comes after a 2018 study found tornadoes spread further moved east to states like Wisconsin.
This year’s stronger El Nino makes it warmer than normal, but it’s difficult to say from this one event what major role climate change has played, meteorologist Patterson said.
βBut with a lot of things going on with climate change, you get more severe events and then you get more impactful severe events,β she said.
Tornadoes are most common in Wisconsin during the summer months between May and August. According to the weather service, fewer than a dozen tornadoes have been reported in total before Thursday between November and February since 1948.
The conditions collided late Thursday afternoon, creating the perfect conditions for tornadoes to form, Patterson said. That included rapidly warming temperatures that topped out at a record 55 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius) in Madison and more moisture with rapidly rising air, creating thunderstorms, Patterson said.
Weather service teams will determine how strong the tornadoes were and how many formed. Photos and videos taken near Evansville posted to social media show a tornado with lightning surrounding it.
Dan Wagner, 76, and his 40-year-old son Andy were unable to reach the basement before the tornado struck their home near the Artis farm.
Andy Wagner said he curled up in a ball and hoped for the best when the windows shattered and the sound of metal on metal filled their house.
βIt was like the house took a deep breath and (then) the windows all exploded. βI am lying on the floor in a fetal position,β he said. βI thought I was going to die.β
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Associated Press reporter Carrie Antlfinger reported from Milwaukee. Bauer reported from Madison.
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This story has been corrected to show that the town where Oller lives is called Brodhead, not Broadhead.