Wednesday was an active day for areas north of the Quad Cities, where severe severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings occurred. Andy, Anthony and I spent much of the afternoon and evening tracking these storms and reports from them.
A couple of reports came in from trained spotters that a "large tornado" was on the ground in Carroll County between Savanna and Mount Carroll. I also read a report from one of the forecasters at the National Weather Service that there was a debris signature on the dual polarization radar (sorry to get all fancy on you). Basically, this means that the radar was picking up non-meteorological phenomenon. We had also heard of a house destroyed and one man taken to the hospital.
Andy and I decided it would be a good idea for me to go cover the aftermath on Thursday, so I met up with the head of the National Weather Service Thursday morning to find out where they would be surveying. While I was not able to follow them, she agreed to meet up with me and talk about what she saw.
So, I headed up there a little before them just to take a look at the damage myself. My first stop was Mount Carroll, IL, at a gas station where the kind attendant told me where to find the damage. It was crazy. There were a line of several trees down, and just a few hundred feet away a house that was untouched.
The locals were very kind and pointed me in the direction of a destroyed home. I arrived at the scene and could not believe my eyes. The house was completely torn off the foundation. The man was taken to the hospital but is remarkably okay. We respected his wished not to shoot any footage of the house. Just a couple hundred feet away there were barns that appeared untouched.
I was also able to feature a family who witnessed the tornado, and you can watch that story here: Savanna Tornado
Thanks to Wendy Popkin for sending this photo of what was the rooftop of Terry Kosher's garage, and for allowing me to spend the day with their family.
No comments:
Post a Comment