Destruction and awe

Like one newsman said tonight, we're used to shoveling snow in January. Not this ...

From one big story to another today. I live for these types of days; the stress sucks, the long hours are exhausting and I eat garbage, if at all -- but the adrenaline rush is unbeatable ... I was pulled off the murder trial last night, and this morning I was writing about the county's tornado damage. ... Initially, I had dressed in a good pair of pants and shoes, only to rethink my decision before leaving the house, knowing I could be entrenched in tornado damage ... By 9:30 this morning I was off to a news conference, and surrounded by another huge contingent of media -- I had to chuckle, too, when I saw that some of the reporters I'd huddled with in a basement yesterday were also off the trial and showing up at the news conference ...

As of tonight, we're being told the tornado that touched down in the western part of the county was an EF3 that stretched 200 yards wide and crossed about 10 miles; the one that hit just north of us was an EF1. More than 50 homes were damaged; about 160 people were rendered homeless. And the most amazing statistic is that just 15 people were injured and nobody was killed ... There's some amazing stories being told too -- like a teenage girl who apparently was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom when she awoke and saw the house next door go down and got to her basement just before her own house collapsed. And a pair of sheriff's deputies I talked with tonight were aiding the victim of a traffic crash when the tornado hit, sucked the air out of them like a vacuum and left them literally hanging on for their lives to police cars and fire trucks.

And believe it or not, the temperatures are dropping now and forecasters are predicting snow tonight ...

Here's some of the stuff worth seeing ...
a Kenosha News coverage ... including photos.
a WISN coverage
a Journal Times coverage
a Journal Sentinel coverage ... including today's NewsWatch blog.