Weather
Weather WisdomWeather Wisdom Monday June 8, 2009By Brian Gotter
One year ago today, heavy rains and strong thunderstorms dumped an additional 2.25” of rain in Milwaukee on top of the 4.93” that fell the day before. The 48 hour total rainfall, and a new record, was 7.18” that created widespread flooding across Milwaukee. More than 9” of rain fell over 5 days in Milwaukee. Parts of Jefferson and Madison counties received more than 12” of rain that caused record flood levels on local rivers. Extreme rain events like that are rare, but as we learned last summer, extremely devastating.
Speaking of rare and devastating, today is the 25th anniversary of the Barneveld F5 tornado. If you have lived here for any amount of time, all you have to say is Barneveld and it conjures up vivid memories of all the destruction. More than 90% of the town was destroyed. The tornado developed at 12:41am and hit Barneveld just before 1:00am. Because most people were sleeping, the tornado, with winds well over 200mph, killed 9 people and caused nearly 200 injuries. The tornado was on the ground for 36 miles and on the ground for 59 minutes. The average Wisconsin tornado is on the ground for 10 minutes and as a rating of F1 with winds around 100mph. Since 1953, there have only been 52 F5 tornadoes in the U.S. Two of those were in Wisconsin…Barneveld and Oakfield in 1996.
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