Rare Nov. Tornado Touches Down In Burnsville
BURNSVILLE, Minn. (WCCO) - The tornado that touched down Saturday night in Burnsville was on the low end of the EF scale, but the damage was quite considerable.
Tornadoes in November are extremely rare: prior to Saturday night, there was only one November tornado on record statewide since 1950.
The tornado siren wasn't a sound Jeff Blue expected to hear.
"Everything starting flying all over the place, and all the leaves just covered the windows. I couldn't see anything and all the windows started shaking," Blue said.
The tornado left behind a two-mile path of damage, and left many homes without power. Kathy Arverson's yard was not spared.
"And then we noticed…there's something wrong with our tree, and then when we walked around here and saw the pile of rubble, we knew that was bad," Arverson said.
The tornado was only on the ground for three minutes, but it snapped or uprooted nearly every tree on Kathy's property.
"The oak tree is in this tree, so we know it fell that way, but neither one of our houses was damaged, thank goodness," she said.
Bruce Johnson, owner of B&J Tree Care, was shocked by the damage.
"Something hit pretty hard to knock over a 35, 40 foot spruce tree," Johnson said.
He's use to cleaning up debris, but never from a tornado in November.
"Ice storms maybe, and snow storms, you know, heavy, wet storms. But never a tornado or whatever this time of year," he said. "It's crazy."
