Catching Up - Minnesota/Tornadoes

Wow, I've gotten behind again. We arrived in Minneapolis last Thursday for a 4-night stay. We decided to go thru the area on our way to the Great Lakes area to spend a few weeks in Michigan. But, first things first.

Wow, were we in for a big surprise the day we arrived! Having spent our entire lives living in "tornado alley", we're not easily spooked or freaked out by thunderstorms...and even tornado activity. So when we received a knock on our door the afternoon we arrived in an RV Park in Minneapolis informing us of severe storms in the area, and informing us where the storm shelter was located, we were not originally overally concerned.....

With menacing clouds rapidly approaching our area and with no access to the local tv channels, I grabbed my laptop and went to the national weather service for reports. Then logged on to local weather stations and whew!!! We were surrounded by tons of tornadoes!!! Really.

Then, I started getting a little Freaked Out. There were confirmed F3 tornadoes (more than one) within 50 miles of our current location. Unfortunately, with all the news I received about the tornadoes, we didn't know the areas or towns where these tornadoes were hitting. Two of the towns we had driven through earlier in the day, both within 50 miles of our current location, had confirmed tornadoes from storm chasers.

The dogs were freaking out far worse than I had ever seen them...and they have meds for storms--so they were definitely picking up on something, as it hadn't even started raining yet and they were turning in circles, barking, panting and just basically freaking out. I thought we should probably go to the storm shelter but didn't appear anyone else was heading that way, and well, I wasn't really sure what to do--other than drug the dogs with their RX for storms that knocks 'em out for a few hours.

Whew! Boy did we dodge a bullet last Thursday!!! Turns out there were "37" Confirmed tornadoes in Minnesota that evening--the LARGEST NUMBER OF TORNADOES IN MINNESOTA HISTORY!!!!!! Sheesh!!! Murphy's Law huh? Can you believe here we were in Minnesota for only a couple of hours and we end up in the worst storm in their history.

What was really freaky for me, was the fact that Minnesota is a relatively SMALL state--compared to what we're used to in Texas, and to have 37 Tornadoes in such a tiny little state, you get a good idea of how close together each of these tornadoes were. Turns out the closest tornado was about 35 miles away, so we only had intense winds of 40-50 and heavy thunderstorms, but at least no tornadoes.

After surviving the worst storm in Minnesota history, the next day we just chilled and hung out around the park. The next day we took off for the Mall of America and spent the day checking out the largest mall in america. We had an awesome time. We spend 4-5 hours and I actually picked up a few blouses and a watch for myself. Mark needed a new wallet and we found one in a western store in the mall as well.

We just chilled our last couple of days in Minnesota, planning our next move and where we would be going and doing. That's a wrap for our Minnesota update. We'll never forget our time in Minnesota. Who'd 'thunk' that we'd have to leave tornado alley at home and travel to Minnesota to encounter the worst tornadic activity in our lives?

Until later~