Evansville tornado: Woman describes damage 'like a war zone'
EVANSVILLE, Wis. - The National Weather Service confirmed two Wisconsin tornadoes from Thursday's severe storms.
The tornadoes destroyed homes and left people and property devastated in parts of Green and Rock counties. The stronger of the two tornadoes touched down near Evansville, where a woman told FOX6 News she's grateful no one was seriously hurt despite the major damage.
"It was just so quick that you didn’t have any time to be scared," said Cathy Wagner.
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Wanger has lived in Evansville for 12 years. She said it took 30 seconds for a tornado Thursday night to devastate her property.
"Heard this really, really loud sound and heard a lot of crashing going on," she said. "When we came outside, it was just – it was like a war zone."
Cathy Wagner surveys damage to Rock County property after tornado
Wagner's son took video that shows the moment the EF-2 tornado rolled in toward their back porch. All day Friday, she and others picked up the pieces – her home one of more than 20 hit by the storm.
"The firemen all showed up – just people that know. Just good people that want to help," said Wagner.
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As residents, like Wanger, counted their blessings, they remained grateful it was not worse.
"I am more grateful for things rather than worried about what got damaged – it’s all material possessions," she said.
Debris closed several roads, and damage to power infrastructure caused outages. A warming shelter was set up for residents.
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February first
The Wisconsin tornadoes in the usually frigid month of February came on a day that broke records for warmth, setting up the perfect scenario for the type of severe weather normally seen in the late spring and summer.
"There wasn't anything inherently unusual about any of these storms when you compare them to other types of severe events we see during the summer and spring," said meteorologist Taylor Patterson."It’s just unusual in the sense that it doesn’t normally happen in February."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that between 1998 and 2022, 31 states across a broad swatch of the country, from Washington state in the northwest to New Mexico in the south, Wisconsin in the Upper Midwest over to Maine in the northeast, didn’t report a single tornado.
But winter tornadoes – like the one in Wisconsin – are likely to be stronger and stay on the ground longer with a wider swath of destruction in a warming world, a 2021 study showed. That comes after a 2018 study found that tornadoes were moving farther east, into states like Wisconsin.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.