Tornado touches down

MELROSE/FREEPORT, Minn. — The weekend took an unexpected turn Aug. 3 in Stearns County as a tornado touched down.

Tanya Christenson, of Freeport, said she had just finished baling hay with her husband, Jason, and her father, Carl Schulzetenberg, when the storm hit. Three of her children, Addison, Jaci, and Kaylin, were at the Stearns County Fair in Sauk Centre.

“During chores, I was watching (the weather) but more for their sake than for ours,” she said. “You could tell it was going to storm, so we started putting stuff in the shed, like loads of straw and all the equipment.”

According to the National Weather Service website, an EF1 tornado touched down in the northwest corner of Melrose. The tornado, with peak wind speeds of 95 mph, traveled 5.4 miles, causing damage to homes and businesses, and ripping up many trees in the area.

Christenson said she was on the phone with her daughter while cleaning up and suggested places to go on the fairgrounds that could be safer for the kids, or to a godmother’s house nearby.

At that point, Christenson said she went to her home across the road, where she and her husband watched the storm from their front porch.

“You could see the rotating clouds come from both directions and kind of swirl,” she said. “When we were on the porch, we saw a couple of wall clouds.”

Christenson said the sky turned shades of green, pink and blue, and clouds were moving from the north and the west toward each other. Leaves and branches were flying outside, she said. The family went into the basement, where they could watch the storm from the back of the house.

“As soon as we went down, we saw our trampoline take off,” she said. “That’s also when it started hailing.”

After the storm passed, Christenson said her father went out into the cornfield to pick up some branches and noted water up to his ankles. She estimates 3 inches of rain fell during the storm.

Christenson said many branches were taken down, as well as multiple trees.

“When we looked to the north, the dry cow shed had a tree go through the solar panel part of the roof,” she said.

While the equipment and milk barn faired the storm fine, Christenson said the door at the top of her silo and part of the roof were damaged.

“It’s a mess in there,” she said. “We only have two doors left, so I think we should be able to feed a good part of it before it goes bad.”

Christenson also said roughly 80 acres of meadow that the family had not been able to cut beforehand is under water again from the storm and the rain from the following days.

The horse shed also was blown an estimated 50 feet away during the tornado, but the horses are OK, Christenson said.

“Luckily they didn’t run away; they kind of huddled together,” she said. “I think they were pretty spooked.”

Christenson said that this is the worst storm she has been through since dairy farming with her dad.

“I thought this was just going to be rain or even a thunderstorm,” she said. “I have seen enough of them, so I’m not usually too worried about them.”

However, with her children at the fairgrounds, Christenson said she was checking the radar more than she normally does.

“Once I knew they were fine there, I was glad they were there (because) it was worse here,” she said. “Everyone is OK. It could have been a lot worse.”

Christenson said now they are focused on cleaning up the damage and are thankful their buildings are still standing, as some in Melrose saw more destruction in the wake of the tornado.

Aaron Middendorf of Melrose, farms with his wife, Cheyenne, and parents. He said they were wrapping up baling hay when the storm hit. 

“We got everything in just before it started storming,” he said. “I was out in the barn and had just got done helping put away everything and making sure the fans were turned down so nothing broke. Then it started hailing.”

Middendorf said he moved a vehicle into the detached garage and was watching the storm from there.

“I could see limbs starting to fall from other trees and started hearing some deep cracks from the tree that was right next to the garage,” he said.

Middendorf decided not to stick out the storm in the garage but ran for the house. Had he taken  his normal left from the garage instead of right, he would have been crushed by a tree that fell. Not even the elevator that broke the tree’s fall would have helped Middendorf said.

Less than a quarter of a mile away, Middendorf’s parents had three trees down, one of which went into the machine shed.

“The biggest devastation was the trees going through the building,” Middendorf said. “There wasn’t that much for it to be a crop loss. There are still leaves on the corn. That was the biggest thing. There wasn’t a whole lot for devastation. It’s unfortunate that it happened, and it was a lot of work, but it was nothing too terrible.”

Middendorf said the storm made for a busy weekend cleaning up trees and damage, but the family got some help from Dave and Nancy Powell.

“You never think it’s going to happen to you until you’re in that situation,” he said. “I am probably going to stay inside the next time it storms like that.”