It's tornado season in the Midwest, but usually they don't all come at once. Before today, the most tornadoes confirmed in Minnesota in a single day was 26, that was in 1992. Normally, there are less than that in an entire year. On this day, that record is expected to be broken as dozens of tornadoes sprouted from a line of storms that raced from southwest Minnesota and off to the northeast and into Wisconsin.
It was getting late in the day and the sun had been hidden behind clouds since about 4 in the afternoon. It was storm building weather with a cool morning, lots of heat building during the day (what we call 'adding energy' to the atmosphere). If the sun gets down soon enough this stuff will dissipate, but these are the longest days of the year in this part of the country with over 15 hours of sunlight. There were storm warnings with dire predictions of hail and wicked weather so I ran some quick errands then tucked my car in the garage and waited for the drama. After much wind and gloominess, the light outside turned a very green (seriously, when the sunlight turns green nothing good comes from it) an hour later it shifted to an odd yellow color. I grabbed the camera and went out hoping to capture the odd color. Epic fail, the camera seems to have 'corrected' the color.
This storm continued to the northwest through the Twin Cities and ended up killing three people. An older couple fled their farmhouse and hunkered down in a ditch, only to get hit by some debris; the elderly gentleman was wounded and his wife was killed. In northwestern Minnesota a 58 year old man (on his birthday none-the-less) checked in at the convenience store where his daughter was working; he also worked there but was off that evening. A tornado whipped into town and the man covered his daughter as they ducked into the corner and the tornado hit the store. He was killed but his daughter survived. Also in north western Minnesota a woman was killed, details are sketchy as places hardest hit are cleaning up.
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