Meteorologists confirm tornado struck west of Twin Cities

Published 3:30 pm Saturday, July 18, 2015

WATERTOWN — An EF1 tornado touched down near Watertown west of the Twin Cities overnight, damaging buildings and flipping cars but caused no injuries, the National Weather Service said Saturday.

Meteorologists said after surveying the damage by daylight that the tornado packed peak winds estimated at 105 mph as it left a path of damage 4.3 miles long and up to 500 yards wide through Hollywood Township. A home weather station recorded a 99 mph wind before it blew off the house.

An EF1 tornado is considered weak on the enhanced Fujita scale, which runs from EF0 to EF5, but it still caused serious damage.

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One Hollywood Township resident, Adam Falk, told KARE-TV he was sleeping in the basement when the storm hit and he was awakened by debris falling on him. He said all of the top-floor windows were destroyed and the doors were blown off their hinges.

“The barn is toast. … The whole first 4 feet of the roof sheeting on the house is gone so water got all the way down to the basement. Heavy water damage,” Falk told the station. He said he wasn’t sure if the home was salvageable.

Falk said his parents raise chickens and his sister has a couple horses on the hobby farm, but those animals seemed fine.

“The cat seemed rattled,” he added.

Xcel Energy said around 225,000 customers in Minnesota and western Wisconsin lost power during the overnight storms. Around 132,000 customers were still without power around 8:30 a.m. Saturday, mostly in the western Twin Cities metro area. The utility said its crews worked through the night, and that other crews from five states were dispatched to aid in restoring service, but the company said it didn’t have an immediate estimate on when power would be fully restored.

The storms brought down large trees in several suburbs. Wind gusts of up to 70 miles an hour were reported in St. Paul, Golden Valley, New Brighton, Maple Grove, Richfield and Lakeville.