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05/13/2007: "Tornado wreaks havoc on area west of Crofton; state park"

With the news of the horrific devastation caused by a tornado that struck a small town in the middle of Kansas barely 12 hours old, the Crofton area had perhaps one of its worst tornado scares in many years.
One huge tornado, estimated at nearly two miles wide, swept up from the south late Saturday afternoon, May 5, crushing farm places in its path before leveling a devastating blow to the Weigand section of the Lewis & Clark State Recreation Area. It then crossed Lewis & Clark Lake, and continued its trek of destruction in South Dakota for another 35 miles, as far north as Menno, SD.
When the winds finally calmed, and area residents came out to look things over, they found outbuildings crushed, windows blown out (or in) on their farmsteads. Lewis & Clark SRA superintendent Daryl Holmberg found that the central portion of his beautiful campground was littered with broken or uprooted trees, demolished buildings, damaged picnic shelters and a boat marina with only one of about two dozen boats still upright and floating, and no way to get to them because the steel docks were twisted or disconnected from land.

“I was backing out of my driveway, to run down and warn our campers, when I saw two funnel clouds over to the east of us,” Holmberg explained. “I then looked to the south and saw a huge black cloud and heard this solid terrible noise, so my wife, who had come outside, and I ran to the basement of the house.”
Only minutes later, when they emerged, they saw a completely changed scene -- starting with their home.
“A section of the roof about 8 feet wide is gone. We’ll need some major roof repair,” Holmberg said. But the house is liveable.
Holmberg told of one unique situation from the storm. A 4-foot-long tree branch was “speared” through the outer wall of their home, piercing their bedroom wall on the inside, and pushing their bed about six inches from where it had been.
But the devastation he found throughout the central section of the park was overwhelming. The litany of damage or destruction seemingly goes on forever.
One motorhome camper was demolished (the campers were not in the park when the storm hit). Another camper was turned on its side (the occpupants were also not in the park during the storm). And one other camper had a lot of tree branches on it.
The smaller of two office/maintenance buildings was blasted apart, the wind spewing office papers, tools and materials throughout the park. The larger office building had one wall pushed out.
All seven park vehicles, mostly pickup trucks, were damaged or destroyed. Two were picked up and rolled on top of the others before being depositied around 50 yards from where they’d been parked.
Two restroom/shower facilities were destroyed. And a nearby picnic shelter lost most of its roof. The marina store building suffered minor damage.
The marina and boat basically is a total wreck. All the docks have suffered damage, and the access walkways from land to the docks have all been rendered useless. There were about 20 boats moored in the marina, and all but one were either turned upside down, pushed onto land, or sunk.
And trees. Holmberg figures as much as 90 percent of the trees in the state park were damaged, uprooted or snapped off at the trunks by the storm.
The park leader said a couple dozen people came out and volunteered their help with initial cleanup efforts. Also, crews from three nearby state parks -- Ponca, Niobrara and Willow Creek -- sent crews over to Weigand to help with the clean up.
“The administration in Lincoln is meeting right now (Monday), working on a plan to get more people up here with heavy equipment,” Holmberg stated. He added that the U.S. Corp of Engineers had been contacted about the possibility of getting some of their Gavins Point Dam people over to the park to help with clean up, as well as providing heavy equipment.
“Given that the prime camping season has not yet begun, and the weekend weather forecast was for rainy conditions, there was not a large crowd of guests using the park. Commission staff has been in contact with owners of damaged RV's and boats to inform them of the situation,” said Jim Swenson, the Commission's east regional parks manager.
Guests who hold reservations for either cabins or campsites during May will be contacted by Commission staff to discuss the status of their reservations. Lake access via the two boat ramps located at the Weigand Marina is restricted until harbor clean up is complete. Boat ramps at nearby Bloomfield and Miller Creek SRAs are open to the public, as well as the Hideaway Acres boat ramp maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“During the 1990s we invested a great deal of manpower and capital into updating the Weigand-Burbach recreation complex,” said Commission Assistant Director Roger Kuhn. “Our goal will be to restore as much of the area as practical in the short term and prior to the summer season, then evaluate our options in regards to rebuilding lost structures and facilities. This will take some time and require a review of available budget dollars. We recognize the importance of this popular park area, and in spite of this devastating event, we will invest great effort into our recovery plan to restore this favorite tourist attraction in northeast Nebraska.”
“We ask everyone's patience as we thoroughly assess the situation and begin recovery efforts,” Swenson said. “We certainly appreciate everyone’s concern and interest in the extent of damage, as well as the offers of volunteer assistance for the cleanup process. That volunteer spirit, in conjunction with the efforts of our agency staff, will help speed up the recover process.”
As is often the case in such a horrific storm, Holmberg found another unique situation. He said he had found a blue blanket wrapped around a tree near his house. “We don’t have a blanket like that,” he said, “so it had to have come from somewhere else. I would be interested to find out where it came from. I’m sure the tornado grabbed it from some place down south.”
And that “someplace down south” wasn’t very far away from the state park.
The tornado passed about three miles west of the city of Crofton. Among the Crofton area farm places it hit were Marcel Kramer’s (southwest of town), Larry Thunker’s, Jerry Thunker’s, Ed Steffen’s, and Ken Mueller’s. Those were the places where damage had been reported to the newspaper office, but it probably wasn’t limited to those.
Thunker, who lost all his outbuildings including his large barn on his place, located three miles west and half-mile south, said he was heading to the basement when the tornado hit. “I could hear the windows breaking as I was going down the steps,” he recalled Monday.
Jerry Thunker, a half-mile north of Larry’s, also lost everything from his rural residence except the house, which had almost all its windows blown out.
A few miles down the road, Ken and Dawn Mueller’s rural farm place saw all the outbuildings damaged or destroyed.
The tornado pushed his big barn 10 feet off its foundation. A newer shed had its garage door ripped from its tracks and a sidewal blasted out.
Ken said their boys Preston and Calvin, along with their friend Tyler Zimmerman, were at home. They went to the basement after Ken, who was in Yankton, had called home to warn them of the impending storm.
“They said they knew something was going on when their ears popped,” Ken recalled. “And they said it sounded like a freight train.”
Ken said he lost a number of trees, and one window was broken on their house, which for the most part was left unscathed. “Kinda twisted things pretty badly,” he noted.
Further north, Ed and Arlene Steffen emerged from their home to find two large hoop barns had been mangled. But Steffen reported that no livestock had been lost.
Crofton residents were made aware of the severe werather when Dave Zavadil, local NOAA weather observer and emergency management co-coordinator, sounded the tornado siren at 5:30 pm on Saturday. Zavadil kept the siren blasting another four times before things quieted down.
Many people who ventured outside when the sirens sounded, or just after, saw the tornado as it rolled along its path west of the city.
After hitting Weigand, the tornado flew over Lewis & Clark Lake, and as it hit land in South Dakota, broke into four smaller twisters. Each one of those tornadoes spawned a path of destruction, with the worst of it on a northerly path that followed Highway 52 as it moved away from the lake and headed north toward Highway 50. Homes and garages were destoyed or damaged, and vehicles were overturned, as the storm made a beeline for the Lesterville and Utica communities.
The tornado passed within two mils of Lesterville, and kept going. Reports of tornado damage as far away as Menno, approximately 35 miles from the lake’s north shore, were issued early Saturday evening.
It was a fast-moving storm, clocked at 40-45 mph.
“It was such a fast moving storm,” said Crofton’s NOAA weather observer Dave Zavadil. “I had three spotters out, and within a minute, all three called in and said they’d seen the tornadao.”
“I can’t imagine being down in southern Knox County,” Zavadil mused. “As fast as that storm was moving, by the time you’d get spotters out and looking, it would have been practically to Crofton.”
Zavadil recorded 1.55 inches of rainfall during Friday and Saturday, with 1.24 coming on Saturday.
The storm forced the cancellation of the professional baseball game that was slated for Saturday afternoon. The ball game will not be rescheduled, as the two teams are starting their regular season. However, the Sioux City Explorers told Crofton Baseball Association officials, that they will schedule a “Crofton Night” at the Explorer’s ballpark in Sioux City sometime later this summer. A date will be announced in the near future.
The tornado sirens caused quite a stir in St. Rose Catholic Church where the 5:30 pm mass was interrupted. Parishoners attending mass were ushered into a protected location.
Dan Leise, general manager of the Cedar-Knox Public Power District, said the energy provider lost 30-40 poles during Saturday's storm and racked up about $40,000 in damage.
“The damage started just east of Bloomfield,” he said. “If you drew a line from there to Weigand, we had sporadic damage all the way. We lost a mile and a quarter of single-phase line just west of Crofton three miles going south.”
Although Cedar-Knox initially had three substations down, Leise said it had restored power to all its customers by Sunday. “We’re going to have another week or two before we have everything back to normal,” he said. “We’ve done quite a bit of temporary work.”
According to the National Weather Service in Omaha, Neb., in cooperation with Knox County emergency management officials, four tornadoes were confirmed in the Nebraska county. The first, an EF-0 (65-85 mph) started just more than a mile southeast of Bloomfield, where a center pivot was flipped, and ended about four miles north of the Nebraska community, where there was minor damage.
The second tornado began about four miles east and three miles north of Bloomfield, and it traveled more than eight miles to three miles west and just more than two miles north of Crofton. The EF-1 tornado damaged the roof of a hog confinement building northeast of Bloomfield and caused steady damage to trees, buildings and power lines until it climaxed west of Crofton with extensive damage to some rural dwellings.
The third tornado, an EF-2, started about a mile to the east of where the second tornado ended. It damaged a grain bin and some large power line support structures as it moved to the north-northwest. It traveled about five miles until it reached Weigand Marina, where it damaged trees, buildings and campers. Boats were damaged, partially sunk or missing. The tornado apparently continued on to wreak havoc in South Dakota.
A fourth tornado, likely an EF-0, started about two miles east and four miles north of Center and ended about a mile west of Santee. Because of the remoteness of the area, the storm survey had trouble tracking the damage caused by the tornado. Damage to some old farm sites was confirmed.