NWS CONFIRM EF2 TORNADO
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 -- 1:50 PM
From the National Weather Service in La Crosse:Discussion about the event
During the late afternoon and evening of August 23rd, a warm front lifted north through central Wisconsin. At the same time, a strong upper level disturbance was moving across the Upper Midwest and northern Great Lakes. These two features combined to generate scattered severe thunderstorms over central Wisconsin that then moved off into east central Wisconsin during the evening.
The storms initially produced large hail, some of which was the size of golf balls near Thorp in the northwestern section of Clark County. As the storms continued to move southeast, a tornado formed 7 miles northwest of Chili at about 5:05pm. This EF2 tornado traveled approximately 7.2 miles east-southeastward before it ended around 5:30pm about 2 miles north-northeast of Chili. The average width of this tornado was around 200 yards and had winds estimated at between 120 and 130 mph. Reports indicate that a house was knocked off its foundation, roofs were blown off houses, barns were damaged and trees and power lines were blown down. In addition, two people suffered minor injuries.
Shortly after this damage occurred, the storm began to weaken as they moved off into Wood and Jackson Counties. Another storm developed as the first one was dissipating, which tracked across southern Clark county into northern Jackson county. This storm produced large hail to the size of walnuts in Neillsville as it passed through. This storm weakened as it left Jackson county and entered northern Juneau county.
Radar Imagery
Below are a pair of radar loops from the two main storms that developed last night. The radar loop on the left shows the progression of the supercell thunderstorm that developed the Chili tornado, while the radar loop on the right shows the progression of the supercell that tracked across southern Clark and northern Jackson counties.
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