Yes, there were a couple of twisters here earlier. I saw Larry riding his bass around one of them laughing his ass off.

Yes, there were a couple of twisters here earlier. I saw Larry riding his bass around one of them laughing his ass off.

squirrelgrease said:

I pray Larry Graham is ok....if we lose him
we lose the man.

MoneyMade said:

This just in: A house landed on him.

squirrelgrease said:

Did it get his little dogma too?

We can only hope.

Stop you guys! Stop it!!!





I do hope everyone in MPLS is okay!

A possible tornado went through an area south of downtown Minneapolis this afternoon, and scattered damage to large trees, cars, a church and other buildings is being reported, but no injuries.

Included in the damage being reported is a church near the Minneapolis Convention Center and the Electric Fetus music store south of downtown. Damage there has forced the store to close.

At 4:15 p.m., WCCO Radio was reporting possible funnel clouds in the North Branch, Minn. area as the storms move north and east of the immediate Twin Cities metro area.

"We are dealing with it now," a filing on Twitter by Electric Fetus reads. "No one was hurt."

A later Electric Fetus tweet read: "Straight line wind just blew in 2 large windows, roof caved in on back side, brick everywhere. Fire trucks are here now."

There were no immediate report of injuries from anywhere in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis officials are urging citizens to stay away from the hardest-hit area, which appears to be Portland Avenue south of downtown. Meanwhile, police and fire officials are "doing house-to-house searches" for possible victims in an area between Interstate Hwy. 35 and Park Avenue and between 35th and 49th street. Inspectors are also being sent out to look for structural damage, said Matt Laible, a city spokesman.

"This dispels myths that tornadoes don't hit urban areas, they go where they want to," said Pete Boulay, assistant state climatologist. "It doesn't happen very often, but they do happen."

Northbound Interstate 35W at Hwy. 62, already a tangled mess at the southern edge of Minneapolis because of construction, is closed due to flooding.

Central Lutheran Church in downtown had an old copper steeple damaged, and two tents used for entertaining also were struck. One was blown into the street and the other was collapsed, said church spokesman Joe Bjordal. The tents were set up in connection with the national gathering of about 2,000 at the Evangelical Church in America at the Convention Center. "We're thankful that nobody was hurt," Bjordal said.

Representatives on the convention floor could hear rain on the roof, but only became aware of the turbulence outside when unofficial convention-goers were moved in from the outside corridors for their safety.

Another hard-hit area is along 5th Avenue S. between 39th and 42nd Streets, where at least 10 huge trees are down, pulling up sidewalks and smashing a handful of cars.

Residents near 33rd Street and Portland Avenue S. reported that electricity is out in the area and a trampoline was stuck in a tree.

Neighbors emerged from their homes appearing shell-shocked. Trees that had been 30 to 40 feet tall were uprooted. Some had landed on cars or rooftops. The blare of sirens was a near constant. A large children's trampoline was perched in the top of a tree in a backyard.

Cody Goelz, 18, could hardly believe his eyes after driving from Bloomington and arriving in the south Minneapolis neighborhood.

"I see shingled ripped off, garbage cans in trees, and dumpsters everywhere," he said. "It's unbelievable. His mother, Kendra Goelz, was philosophical: "Our house is standing and so are our neighbors, so we're good."

Many people who didn't see the tornado knew by the sound that came without warning.

"It came in just a second," said Karen Gilchrist, who lives a block off Portland on Fifth Avenue. "It was a road. It was so quick that it scared me."

Jason Kise, was in the house he rents on Fifth Avenue near 35th Street when he heard it: "It kinda sounded like an 18-wheeler was going through the alley," he said. "There were just loud noises, the power went out, and then there was this tree..." The tree to which he referred was the large elm that fell in the yard, raking the house as it came down and pressing against the door. "As soon as I opened my front door, the whole foyer was flooded with tree," Kise said.

Twelve-year-old Jeanette Gonzalez said she saw the tornado: "It was black with a lot of paper everywhere. It came fast, and there was too much noise. It was very scary."

A 50-foot maple smashed a pickup at a home at 44th and Portland, where 14-year-old Hami Hoffert was the computer listening to music.

"I didn't hear anything, but saw my dog going crazy," Jami said. " I looked out the window, saw the wind and the rain, grabbed my dog and ran down to the basement."

Jami's neighbor across the street, Sam Boline was clearing drains at the corner in anticipation of the downpour, when he "looked up and saw things flying down Portland. And when I say 'things' I mean trees. My cap blew off. I started to go get it and then I thought, it ain't nothing but a hat."

Meanwhile, the city is getting a good drenching this afternoon with rain and with Twitter reports from people reporting a tornado along Interstate 35W in the northern suburbs, and highway flooding.

Despite the damage through south Minneapolis and extensive online chatter about a tornado across the northern metro area, the National Weather Service was not confirming that any tornadoes had actually touched down. Its network of outside observers had been activated across the metro area, but neither the observers nor law enforcement had reported touchdowns by 3:30 p.m., said Dan Luna, meteorologist-in-charge at the NWS Twin Cities office in Chanhassen.

Even so, the agency issued its first of many tornado warnings at 2:11 p.m. for Hennepin County, based on a report from the public near downtown Minneapolis. Over the next two hours and service issued nine more warnings across the metro area and into Wisconsin, with the last, for Barron and Polk Counties in Wisconsin, set to expire at 5 p.m.

Luna said the office was checking one law enforcement report of a tornado along the border of Washington and Dakota Counties, at 2:43 p.m.

NWS damage analysts will tour damaged areas Thursday to determine whether the storms included a tornado or just strong winds.

Luna said the thunderstorms that moved through were too weak to spawn significant tornadoes. While they featured winds moving in different directions, they did not have enough of the warm-air updraft or height needed to produce explosive twisters.

"Any potential tornado that would have developed would have been very short-lived, too," Luna said.

Luna added that such systems make predicting tornadoes difficult. Lead-time on tornado warnings has increased in recent years, but many times warnings are still not issues until tornadoes are actually seen on the ground.

Cottage Grove police reported seeing funnel clouds near the River oaks golf course near Hwys. 61 and 95 but no reports of damage or injuries.

In Washington County, emergency officials were still trying to assess what sort of storms were moving through the area, which was under a tornado warning at midafternoon.

One downtown witness saw a very large gray cloud that was swirling very slowly with what seemed to be "light" debris, such as newspapers, in it. It was moving very slowly north on the outskirts of downtown.

"I did a double-take because I didn't hear any sirens even though it looked just like a tornado, even though it was rotating very slowly," said Suzanne Ziegler, a reporter at the Star Tribune who was driving toward it. "It looked like a tornado in slow-motion."

Huge trees are down on Portland Avenue and 35th Street S. and other nearby intersections, according to one witness. Police have the area sealed off.

"We saw the remnants of the funnel here in our office on the 53rd floor of 225 South Sixth Street," said David Hakensen, senior vice president at Fleishman-Hillard Inc. "I was on the phone looking south out of my office, noticed it got dark, and then the clouds between our building and 222 S. 9th Street were swirling with branches and leaves."

Hakensen detected no damage to his building but added, "It was a little disconcerting."

In an office on the 29th floor of the Accenture building at 7th Street and 3rd Avenue, downtown paralegal Nina Page was discussing a case with a co-worker.

"All of a sudden, [the co-worker] said, 'Look outside the window, look at that cloud, it's kind of low,' " Page recounted later. "And I said, 'It is. Wait a minute, it's moving!' "

As they watched from their perch, slightly above the cloud, they detected a swirling motion within the cloud, then garbage flying.

"My nose is against the window," Page recalled.

The last major tornado to hit Minneapolis was on June 14, 1981, when a twister struck Edina, passed near Lake Harriet and touched down in Roseville. Other notable metro area tornadoes include one that hit Apache Plaza in St. Anthony in 1984, the Springbrook Nature Center in Brooklyn Park in 1986 and a series of tornadoes in Fridley and the north metro in 1965.

Staff writers Tim Harlow, Abby Simons, Bruce Adomeit, Lee Dean, Suzanne Ziegler and Maria Elena Baca contributed to this report.

Nothinbutjoy said:

Luckily, seems there have been no injuries.

http://www.startribune.co...page=5&c=y



Ironically, Larry G has played in-store at the Electric Fetus. A great indie record store, by the way.

I heard on the news (CNN) a tornado struck in Minneapolis. I hope everyone there including our beloved Prince is doing alright. My prayers and concerns goes out to all residing there.

treniselove said:

Thank you very much! In all my years of living downtown, I've never heard of a tornado touching down around here. The tornado touched down about a block away from me at the convention center, and then about half a mile away at the Electric Fetus. Also, it swept by my parents' house further south (in Minneapolis). Luckily, no one got hurt!! Just a lot of out-of-work stoplights, damaged rooftops and toppled trees. A mess, but it could have been much worse. Thanks again for your concern, though!

Minneapolis Pastor: Tornado a Warning to Gay-Loving Lutherans
John Piper, pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, wrote a blog post today interpreting a recent tornado in Minneapolis as a sign that Jesus Christ, who "controls the wind, including all tornados," sent down a twister because the Lutheran Church is considering lifting restrictions on gay clergy at a convention there this week.

The tornado damaged portions of the convention center where the Lutherans are meeting as well as the steeple of the Central Lutheran Church.

Concludes Piper: "The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners."

Shortly after the storm hit, the 1,014 Lutherans passed a social statement by a one vote margin:

"The social statement is a long document that essentially says that the church will agree to disagree on the issue of same-sex relationships, but will neither punish congregations that decide to bless such relationships nor force congregations that reject blessing same-sex couples. 'This church also acknowledges that consensus does not exist concerning how to regard same-gender committed relationships, even after many years of thoughtful, respectful, and faithful study and conversation,' the statement says in part. “'We do not have agreement on whether this church should honor these relationships, uplift, shelter and protect them, or on precisely how it is appropriate to do so.' But LGBT Lutherans are hailing the vote, which came in at 676 to 338, exactly the 66.67 percent margin needed."