Rare January Tornadoes Rip Through Southeastern Wisconsin

I was just there for the holidays. Two sirens went off in my hometown (Waterford) but none were sighted.

A string of rare January tornadoes spawned by a freakish winter weather system tore through southeastern Wisconsin on Monday, destroying about 30 homes in Kenosha County, uprooting trees and knocking out power to thousands. More than a dozen people were injured during the tornadoes, which were accompanied by flood warnings, heavy rains and 60-degree-plus temperatures that made large puddles out of what had been piles of snow last week. There were severe thunderstorm warnings before the tornadoes came into play.

"This is crazy - in the past 14 years, this office has never had a reason to issue a severe thunderstorm warning in the month of January," read a statement posted on the Web site of the National Weather Service, which issued warnings for Rock, Walworth, Racine and Kenosha counties Monday morning. "Winter storm warnings and blizzard warnings - yes, but not severe thunderstorm warnings," the statement from the Sullivan office said. It got worse - tornado warnings followed.

In all, five reports of tornadoes came in to the National Weather Service - one in Walworth County, south of Pell Lake, and four in Kenosha County. The twisters appear to have struck the hardest in the Town of Wheatland in Kenosha County, where authorities reported 25 to 30 homes destroyed, about 50 to 100 people left homeless and about 100 homes damaged.

Two tornadoes on the ground were reported about three miles northwest of the Kenosha airport, and another tornado was spotted about three miles northeast of New Munster. About four miles northwest of Sturtevant in Racine County, debris was reported falling from the sky.

Another tornado was reported about two miles southeast of Pell Lake in Walworth County. The roof of a barn was blown off at county Highway Q near Twin Lakes Road. Flash flooding was reported in Milwaukee and Greendale, and a quarter-inch of hail was reported in Hales Corners.

The last time severe summerlike weather struck southern Wisconsin in winter was in February 1999, when storms produced golf-ball size hail and wind gusts of up to 70 mph. The last time a tornado touched down in Wisconsin was in January 1967; on Jan. 24, a tornado plowed a 25-mile path through Green and Rock Counties, the National Weather Service said. For the past several days, unseasonably warm temperatures and rainfall have melted almost all the 15 to 33 inches of snow that fell in December, pushing streams and rivers in southern Wisconsin near or above flood stage. On Monday, Milwaukee's temperature reached 63 degrees, smashing the old record of 47 degrees set Jan. 7, 2003. Flood warnings remained in effect Monday night for the Fox River near New Munster, where moderate flooding was expected.

This edited story was written by Jesse Garza in Milwaukee, with reports from Lee Bergquist and Scott Williams in Kenosha County and John Dobberstein in Milwaukee, all of the Journal Sentinel staff.