8/08/09 Minneapolis tornado

I was at home. Yeah, didn't head out. To be honest I was nervous, my wife was nervous, and I decided to play intercept if anything came close, which looked like a real good possibility. I had no desire to be caught out somewhere while my neighborhood was trashed- every chaser's nightmare I think. Wife and kids come first, not that I would have been able to do much if it had happened, but I felt better being with them...

After a while I started thinking cap bust so I really felt good about my decision. When the storm fired I could have easily shot down 10 or 169 and been in perfect position, but in a traffic-clogged Saturday evening metro mess there was just no way... and I'll never second guess that. Ultimate irony, got a phone call from my mom (whom I was frantically trying to reach-without success) at Greenhaven golf course in Anoka attending the Anoka TORNADOES class of 59 50-year reunion. They spent 20 minutes in the tornado shelter. Love it.

I know of several chasers on it who followed it only because it pretty much went right over their homes, and I have the utmost respect for the people who followed this safely and called it in. And a couple who were in it... because of roads, poor visibility, all the things which convinced me not to go for it. So glad this storm waited until near dark to fire, and that surface winds were light, because this could have been so much worse. I had visions of 5/25/08 running through my mind.

Here's the event summary from our local WFO. Still unbelieveable to me that the path length was 9 miles through a densely populated metro and there were no injuries and actually very light damage, all things considered. I'll also bet that there were several thousand idiots out trying to get a good look at it not to mention all the traffic that the meso passed over... and the thing cycled pretty much over the entire north metro before apparently dropping another one in the trees of Wisconsin... eesh, still gives me chills to think about what could have been.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=mpx&storyid=29737&source=0