EF-3 tornado devastates Appleton, Menasha as Wisconsin recovers

A tornado with peak winds near 140 mph tore roughly a 12-mile path through Wisconsin’s Fox Valley on Monday, severely damaging and destroying homes and businesses in Menasha and Appleton and cutting power to tens of thousands of residents as cleanup entered its second day Tuesday.

The National Weather Service’s Green Bay office upgraded its rating of the storm to EF-3 on Tuesday, after initially rating it an EF-2. The tornado had peak winds of around 140 mph, with the most extensive damage near U.S. 10 and Highway 441 in northern Menasha, and traveled roughly 12.1 miles with a maximum width of 1,500 yards. 

The weather service’s damage survey has not yet released a finalized touchdown time. Meteorologists in Green Bay issued a tornado warning for the Fox Cities region at 11:59 a.m., moments after the tornado apparently formed, according to Associated Press reporting on NWS warning products. Menasha Police Chief Matt Albrecht said the storm struck Menasha and the east side of neighboring Fox Crossing around 12:20 p.m., and the weather service said the tornado was moving over Lake Winnebago toward Fond du Lac County roughly five minutes later before dissipating.

The storm’s approach had been tracked as a wind-and-hail threat rather than a tornado threat for much of the morning; a severe thunderstorm warning mentioning damaging winds went out at 11:13 a.m., with the tornado possibility added in an update eight minutes later. Forecasters described the storm as “extremely dangerous” and upgraded the warning to a Particularly Dangerous Situation shortly after noon.

Menasha Mayor Austin Hammond declared a local state of disaster Monday, effective at the time the storm struck, and neighboring Neenah and the Town of Grand Chute each declared their own emergencies over downed trees, damaged utilities and blocked roadways. Menasha and Fox Crossing imposed a citywide curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. “until further notice,” and a boil-water order was issued for the community.

“At this point, we are unaware, unsure of how bad the damage is” because many roads remained impassable, Chief Albrecht said Monday afternoon, according to the AP. First responders worked to reach affected areas to search for anyone injured.

Winnebago County Executive Gordon Hintz said the destruction visible from the air was hard to take in. “It just looks like a bulldozer came through and knocked it over,” he told WLUK-TV Tuesday, adding that “we have some long days ahead of us.”

The tornado knocked out power to a large share of Menasha’s roughly 18,000 residents, and utility crews have warned some areas could remain dark for days given damage to transmission lines and poles. By Tuesday morning, Wisconsin Public Service and We Energies crews had restored power to tens of thousands of customers statewide, though extensive line and pole damage in the hardest-hit neighborhoods was slowing the work, a WPS spokesman told WLUK.

Elsewhere in the state, storms tied to the same weather system turned deadly hours earlier. A 29-year-old worker with a tree-trimming crew contracted by We Energies was killed in a suspected lightning strike in Whitewater, roughly 90 miles south of Menasha, Whitewater Fire & EMS said. The man was found unresponsive about 60 feet up a tree near Elizabeth and Laurel streets shortly before 10 a.m. after a supervisor reported “a loud bang and a flash.” The Walworth County Medical Examiner’s Office is investigating; the man had not been publicly identified as of Tuesday.

Local officials said no fatalities have been confirmed from the tornado itself, though several people were treated at area hospitals for injuries.

Residents described a scene of sudden, disorienting destruction. Douglas Johnson returned to his Menasha neighborhood to find his house shifted at a 45-degree angle on its foundation.

“Everything else is gone inside,” he told Wisconsin Public Radio. His dog survived by hiding in a crawl space beneath his bed.

The same storm system also dropped hail as large as 4 inches in diameter in parts of northern and eastern Wisconsin, according to the weather service, and produced damaging straight-line winds across other portions of the state.

Emergency shelters have opened at Christ the Rock Community Church in Menasha, the Elks Lodge and Calvary Bible Church in Neenah, and a volunteer and donation center has been set up at the former UW-Oshkosh Fox Cities campus in Menasha to coordinate cleanup efforts.