BY MICHAEL BURKE
and Journal Times staff | Posted: Monday, January 7, 2008 12:00 am
KENOSHA COUNTY - Several homes were flattened or severely damaged in a flurry of tornadoes that slammed the county Monday afternoon. However, the human toll, with no deaths and about 13 minor injuries reported, appeared light.
Eerily warm weather Monday ushered in the tornadoes that attacked the western end of this county starting around 4 p.m.. They concentrated their wrath on Wheatland Township and devastated several homes in a subdivision.
Deputies in the area responding to a traffic accident saw a house collapse when the storm blew through, Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said.
"It got flattened as they were there," he said. Beth said windblown debris from the house ripped the emergency light bar from the squad car.
Citizens reported numerous funnel cloud sightings. One witness told an area radio station he saw a funnel cloud which he estimated at one to two city blocks wide. Another estimated a tornado's width at 100-200 feet.
Authorities went street by street to check for damage and injuries in the town. As of 9 p.m., Kenosha County Sheriff's Department spokesman Sgt. Gil Benn said the Wheatland area had 29 homes with significant damage - broken windows, ripped siding and more. Of those, six were either partially collapsed or completely leveled.
The Somers area was also struck. Three or four houses were flattened, along with several that took roof damage. Also damaged was the restaurant Tacos El Rey at 2200 Birch Road. Lt. Paul Falduto said it "looked like a bomb hit".
Streets in the neighborhood were like a maze, with many roads blocked by authorities, beginning at 22nd Avenue and Highway E heading south and east to Sheridan Road.
Debris filled some streets, including entire trees that fell on the road and sidewalks. Between 6 and 7 p.m., curious neighbors swarmed the streets with flashlights to assess the damage.
One resident said he was outside talking to a neighbor when they saw a funnel cloud carrying debris pass overhead, about one block over.
"It was pretty incredible," said Nunz Tenuta, who lives on 19th Avenue in southern Kenosha, near the damaged restaurant.
Emergency operations
In the immediate aftermath, Kenosha authorities set up an emergency operations center at highways 50 and O, near the area hardest-hit.
The damage assessment was complicated by darkness and foggy conditions, said Lori Getter, spokeswoman for Wisconsin Emergency Management.
Utility crews were working to restore power to at least 3,600 We Energies customers in Kenosha and 1,700 in Wheatland, spokeswoman Irissol Arce said.
The sheriff's department closed off sections of roads with downed power lines. The storms that felled the lines developed in Illinois and then moved east-northeast in Walworth and Kenosha counties.
Beckie Gilbert, a secretary who works in Wheatland, watched wispy funnel clouds grow from her company's back door. The strengthening tornado approached the ground and uprooted about five trees, she said.
"We saw it in the distance, which wasn't far, and it was pretty scary," she said. "We were watching as it picked up dirt and got really dark, and then it disappeared over some trees."
Mary Aiello, 47, had just gotten home from work when she turned on the TV to see the news of the storm. Aiello, who lives on North 22nd Avenue by Highway E in Kenosha, was about one-half mile north of where the tornado touched down.
"It passed right through my backyard," she said. "There was no wind, there was no sound at all, it was just dead silence."
Her house and yard sustained no damage from the storm. But Aiello's niece, 23-year-old Lindsey Chapman, wasn't so lucky. Because of gas leaks in the area, she was evacuated from her home at 22nd Avenue and Birch Road in Kenosha, right up the block from where the tornado caused a lot of damage. She and her brother had been going outside taking pictures every five to 10 minutes, from about 4:20 until the storm hit.
"We had no wind, no rain from about 4 o'clock to about 4:25, and then the sky went relatively black," Chapman said. As the wind picked up, they went inside.
"The whole building shook, and then the lights went on and off a couple times, and then that was it."
Flying lumber
As people started to spot funnel clouds, sirens sounded numerous times starting at 3:50 p.m.
"We had many reports of visibility totally obscured by hail, flying debris and the weather," Benn said. "We had other people report actually seeing the funnels."
He said two drivers lost control and went off of roads during the storms at Highway 50 near Highway O. One motorist avoided injury when a piece of flying lumber crashed through their windshield.
Aurora Health Care spokesman Andy Johnson said five people sought treatment at Kenosha County's Aurora Medical Center. Five more went to Burlington Memorial Hospital and three went to Aurora Lakeland Medical Center in Elkhorn. All injuries were minor, he said.
The tornado warning disrupted a murder trial in Walworth County as at least 300 people evacuated to a courthouse basement as a precaution. Three juries, including the one from that case, were kept away from the rest of the courthouse employees, deputies, reporters and others in the basement.
The sheriff's department asked that people who needed help or wanted to report damage call the information number (262) 605-7926.
Warmth and wind sheer
"This is a rare January event," said Brian Manthey of We Energies. "It's really comparable to a summer storm."
Underscoring that statement is the fact that the previous two times this area saw tornadoes both came in August of their respective years - in 2001 and 2005.
According to National Weather Service data, Wisconsin previously recorded only one January tornado since 1844 - in 1967.
National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Franks said a combination of a odd, unseasonable warm front in the area and wind sheer conditions cooked up the danger storms and spawned tornadoes.
"There was a warm front draped across the area," he said about the conditions leading up to the tornadoes. And, with low pressure to the southwest of this part of the state, the air was unstable.
"Those two in combination provided some of the lift to get the thunderstorms going," Franks said.
"We also had a pretty good-looking wind sheer profile, which means an increase in winds with height, and also winds shifting in direction."
The unstable conditions, especially for January, in combination with wind sheer "kind of organized those thunderstorms and causes the whole storm to rotate," Franks continued.
"Once you have a rotating thunderstorm, it's just about stretching it down to the surface for a tornado."
"It looks like there were two different cells, or storms, that were dropping thunderstorms," Franks said. "Right now we have five reports of tornadoes … and a few on Illinois' side."
After the main storm blast, a second tornado warning was issued for Racine and Kenosha counties. "Another cell was showing up on radar, really strong rotation on radar," Franks explained.
Wind speeds in the twisters were not immediately known. Franks said the National Weather Service will soon do a storm damage survey to estimate wind speeds.
By early evening, all that was left were some weak thunderstorms, the "last gasp" of the earlier ferocious weather, Franks said.
Journal Times reporters Marci Laehr-Tenuta, David Steinkraus and Bridget Thoreson contributed to this report.