The morning of Aug. 7, 2013 was a wild ride, weather-wise, that likely won’t soon be forgotten.
Six tornadoes touched down over a very short period of time in the early morning hours of that day. The strongest of those, an EF-2 that did extensive damage to a church in New London.
The parent storm, not the typical supercell thunderstorm that spawns tornadoes, but what was called a QLCS – quasi-linear convective system. These more very quickly and the tornadoes are very hard to warn. And that was the case on the morning of the 7th.
In the video above, you can see the radar loop to show you where the tornadoes formed and how fast they happened.
- At about 12:22 a.m., the first two tornadoes, including that EF-2 that hit New London, formed up and moved on into parts of Outagamie County.
- By the time 12:40 had rolled around, there were three tornadoes on the ground at once, including the longest track tornado of the night – that would go about 30 miles – and one that did extensive damage in Appleton. The long-track one that went 30 miles would lift near Maribel.
- At about 1 a.m. while that was still on the ground, another weak one spun up near the Brown-Kewaunee county border.
- By 1:10 a.m. the tornadoes were done, the storms had moved off the Lakeshore – at least the front edge of those storms.
In about a half hour, from 12:40 to 1:10 a.m., these storms moved from Appleton to the Lakeshore, an indication of just how fast they were moving and how powerful these storms were.