4 tornadoes Wednesday: West Allis, Nashotah, Burlington, Lake Geneva
WEST ALLIS, Wis. - The National Weather Service confirmed four EF-0 Tornadoes touched down in southeast Wisconsin Wednesday, Oct. 13 – in West Allis, Nashotah, Burlington and Lake Geneva.
Peak winds were 65mph except for West Allis, which was 75 mph.
The West Allis tornado was confirmed Thursday afternoon. It was the first tornado to touch down in Milwaukee County since July 2, 2000.
After an NWS storm survey, it was noted that peak winds were around 75 miles per hour around S. 58th and W. Stack Drive. It started around 12:19 p.m. and ended less than 10 minutes near S. 57th Street. Officials noted the path of the tornado stretched about three miles.
"I was standing by the window," said Megan Berther, whose family owns D.A. Berther, Inc. near 90th and Becher. "And all of a sudden, this gust of air came out of nowhere."
Berther said the company's new surveillance cameras were in the right place at the right time.
"I started shaking like crazy after afterwards because I just saw a tornado," Berther said.
"We normally don’t get them in October," said Tim Halbach of the National Weather Service.
Halbach and his NWS crews were on the hunt Thursday to find the tornado's path. They had crews surveying damage in Milwaukee, Jefferson and Ozaukee counties.
"We're going through and trying to find the paths of where some of the worst damage was," Halbach said. "For this one (in West Allis), we have video that’s been passed along to us which makes it easier to match up what we saw on radar."
SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News
"We just lucked out that we had switched over our systems and that we even caught it on camera period," Berther said.
What Berther thought was just a big gust of wind turned into an October twister in Milwaukee County.
The NWS tells FOX6 News they are glad they have the use of technology to be able to send out warnings quickly to the public. They are also happy to report there were no injuries as a result of these storms – just a lot of cleanup.
FOX6Now.com offers a variety of extremely useful weather tools to help you navigate the stormy season.