Tornado rips through Piston Popper field...

[wwwarbird]

 A reported tornado came directly across Minneapolis Piston Popper flying field in Fridley, MN around 3:00pm today.

 Luckily, none of our members were at the home field at the time. A bunch of us were about 10 miles to the northeast trying to put on a C/L flying demo at Anoka County Airport for their annual Discover Aviation days event. It's kind of an airport open house weekend that they put on. We got in maybe a dozen flights during the morning and then sat in Jim Gevay's hangar and watched it rain on and off the for rest of the day. We finally gave up and left Anoka about the same time the tornado was cruising across our regular flying site.

 At the home field the roof of our concrete block storage building was torn completely off, went through and over the fence, and then landed out in the parking lot about 100 feet or so to the northwest of the building. It also tore off the entire top row of block. The portable outhouse that was sitting next to and against the storage building is completely gone. It ended up a hundred or so yards away all the way across the parking lot to the northeast and ended up shredded into pieces and stuffed underneath a semi trailer. One wall of it was still laying out in our field. Most of a roughly 100' long snow fence section down in the southeast corner of the field is down too. Looks like it is ok for the most part, just uprooted and pushed over from the wind. A lot of trees are also down in the immediate and surrounding areas. All of the trees on the west end of the flying field toward East River Road are down. There is a lot of small debris scattered all over the field and especially all along the fence line adjacent to the parking lot.

 Looks like it's time to organize a club cleanup before the next mowing session.

[Clint Ormosen]

Hey, at least the roof looks like it's in one piece. Just need to drop it back on! It might need a nail or two.

[builditright]

I've been through a few hurricanes and seen a bit of damage to other peoples stuff,
so I am glad no one was around and no one got hurt.

[Steve Scott]

Wayne,

What about those pesky solar panels on the south side of the field which play havoc during a north breeze?

Sounds like we pretty much took a direct hit.  I called Tony K's cell phone when the alerts were sounded.  Glad you all decided to leave the equipment at the airport.

[wwwarbird]

Wayne,

What about those pesky solar panels on the south side of the field which play havoc during a north breeze?

 Steve,

 The panels all looked to be just fine. Weird tornado stuff.

[Steve Scott]

Fortunately all of our members were at the Blaine Aviation Days event doing a public demo about 10 miles away.  Otherwise (given the weather) we'd be at this field buzzing around on a Sunday afternoon.  Guess where everyone would try to take shelter from an approaching storm?  

Guess I've been through the gamut of mother nature:

Earthquakes in the NW and NE USA
Typhoon in SE Asia destroyed much of our household goods sitting on a dock in Manila
Mt St Helens volcano eruption in 1980 killed 5 of my cousins

Fortunately, no major flooding yet (except for a couple of sump pump failures).

[jim gevay]

It's a good thing you guys left when you did.
 The weather hit the airport just after Keith left and came on very sudden. Things started to blow and I was bringing the hangar door down when debris was flying around and some lucky guy ducked into the hangar just in time. As the door was coming down I saw one of the museums tents blow over with their stuff getting picked up and blown around. Norm, Bob, the lucky guy and myself rode it out in there.
It sounded like parts of the hangar roof might be peeling off and I had thoughts of the hangar collapsing, it's over 50 years old.
Then it ended just as suddenly.
 
Afterwards we walked around and looked at some of the minor damage at the airport. A few hangar doors were damaged or pushed in and mine had a gutter torn upward, all the tents were mangled and blown over. The museum helicopter was pushed into the engine nacele on the Grumman S2 Tracker next to it, with a big gash. All the Mohawks were weather-vaned into the wind, porta potties were blown over or pushed down the ramp. No injuries that I know of.

[john e. holliday]

Now you think that was bad,  Look at the pics of Joplin MISSOURI.   I hope all our modelling friends and family made it thru okay.  Had sirens going off here in Shawnee KANSAS Saturday night.  The local stations showed nothing as far as tornados on the radar.