A barn raiser!!

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ed4copies

ed4copies

Local Chapter Manager
Joined
Mar 25, 2005
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Location
Racine, WI, USA.
Tornado in Sturtevant, WI!!!

Those of you who know me well know I actually LIVE in Sturtevant, mailing address. So, this is partially to say we are fine, the tornado was far from us (5 miles or so).

But, on a more interesting note--if you watch the news tonight, you MAY see a picture of a barn in the area. It was built on four brick "pedestals" about 3 feet high. Well, today's tornado picked it up and moved it, maybe thirty feet, so it is now on TWO of the pedestals, but they are near the center of the building, instead of on the ends.

When you see the size of the barn (generally unharmed), you can only marvel at the tremedous weight that was lifted and moved.

Quite amazing and a GREAT picture---watch for it.

(Oh there are also the mandatory "snapped like twig" pictures of the 2 foot diameter maple trees---but you have seen that before!!)
 
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Wow! I heard about some of that and if I had the time, I was temped to post a thread entitled: Exoticblanks blows ........... away?!

:) Hope all is ok around you... the wind is still nuts here, but nothing like that!
 
This one maybe?

getimage.aspx
 
That's the one!!

Sorry, it was not four pedestals, it was a brick cow barn!! You can see it to the right (as you look at the picture). But the wood barn structure is virtually undamaged.

(The rafters in those things are 6x6 or 8x8 and weigh about 100 pounds a piece in 20 foot lengths.)
 
I was flying in to Chicago Midway when some of this was going on! They kept our plane in a holding pattern for 45 minutes and then let us land. It was one of the roughest flights I have been on. Then I had a quick hop to my connection and off we went, 30 minutes late. Sitting on the taxiway waiting for our turn to take off, the wind was so strong it was bouncing the place all around. It was quite rough sitting on the ground! We took off like a rocket, though, with that hellascious head wind!

I guess I was lucky to get in and out at just the right time. I heard they cancelled 300 flights in the area today. I could still be sitting in Chicago!
 
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ed4copies said:
(The rafters in those things are 6x6 or 8x8 and weigh about 100 pounds a piece in 20 foot lengths.)
Click to expand...

You must have some light maple in Sturtevant. By my back of the napkin calculations, that's over 100 board feet of maple and probably over 400 pounds per 20-foot length. :rolleyes:
 
Tornado in Eaton Rapids, MI ...no, I'm not kidding Ed ...I live in Eaton Rapids, it's about 200 miles straight east of Sturtevant, WI ! Happened around 11:30 this morning. I haven't heard of any real damage, I believe it just ran through some corn fields taking out some trees and fences a few miles south of me. Eaton Rapids is a pretty small town too. Because the tornado took out the power, our police officer of the town had to stand and direct the occasional car through our street light. :laugh:
 
Where is Sturtevant, ED? I lived in Madison, Argyle and Barneveld, ( Which was all but wiped off the map by a Tornado rght after I moved to California), and don't remember where it is.
Craig
 
workinforwood said:
Tornado in Eaton Rapids, MI ...no, I'm not kidding Ed ...I live in Eaton Rapids, it's about 200 miles straight east of Sturtevant, WI ! Happened around 11:30 this morning. I haven't heard of any real damage, I believe it just ran through some corn fields taking out some trees and fences a few miles south of me. Eaton Rapids is a pretty small town too. Because the tornado took out the power, our police officer of the town had to stand and direct the occasional car through our street light. :laugh:
Click to expand...

LOL.. Jeff you had me going there... I almost said "singular!!??" But good old google proves to me you have more than one street light :rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
DCBluesman said:
ed4copies said:
(The rafters in those things are 6x6 or 8x8 and weigh about 100 pounds a piece in 20 foot lengths.)
Click to expand...

You must have some light maple in Sturtevant. By my back of the napkin calculations, that's over 100 board feet of maple and probably over 400 pounds per 20-foot length. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...


Then watch out everyone!!!! I LIFTED one end of these routinely in my youth--with another guy on the other end, over our heads----I was MUCH stronger than I realized!!!! Or, they were fir or oak!!
 
Ed, glad everyones OK, living here in tornado alley we've see more than our share of them. Been through both tornado's and hurricanes, can't say i've enjoyed either.
 
We get them from time to time, Roy. This was the "perfect" kind--moved an old barn, did no damage to homes or people---if you gotta have em, them's the kind to have!!
 
I'm glad you're all safe too.
It's so windy here today our chicken laid the same egg 3 times!! : ) ...and the wind blew our barbed wire fence wrong side out! Whewww!!!
 
Santacraig said:
Where is Sturtevant, ED? I lived in Madison, Argyle and Barneveld, ( Which was all but wiped off the map by a Tornado rght after I moved to California), and don't remember where it is.
Craig
Click to expand...

About 20 miles south of Milwaukee, 70 miles north of Chicago, just east of I94. (Immediately west of Racine)
 
ed4copies said:
About 20 miles south of Milwaukee, 70 miles north of Chicago, just east of I94. (Immediately west of Racine)
Click to expand...

This wind keeps up, it might be east of Racine by morning! LOL

My FB page is full of people posting things like wrecked swingsets, sheds and shingles flying off of roofs.
 
ed4copies said:
For perspective, Dean is about 100 miles (close, Dean??) north of us.
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Yep.. Just a tad over that... about a 2 hour drive ... or if the wind were a bit more from the south instead of the south west ... about 3 hours by wind!

Just picture that.. hook pen kits onto a little GI joe parachute and I could go out and grab them a couple hours later! :biggrin:

Seriously though, I hope thing are ok for everyone... I just checked.. our electric company has a total of just shy of 500K customers and right nearly 10% of them are without electric! (and not me for a change, YET!) We have overhead lines in my subdivision still and usually by now we would have lost it at least once).
 
Yes I have

ed4copies said:
Tornado in Sturtevant, WI!!!

Those of you who know me well know I actually LIVE in Sturtevant, mailing address. So, this is partially to say we are fine, the tornado was far from us (5 miles or so).

But, on a more interesting note--if you watch the news tonight, you MAY see a picture of a barn in the area. It was built on four brick "pedestals" about 3 feet high. Well, today's tornado picked it up and moved it, maybe thirty feet, so it is now on TWO of the pedestals, but they are near the center of the building, instead of on the ends.

When you see the size of the barn (generally unharmed), you can only marvel at the tremedous weight that was lifted and moved.

Quite amazing and a GREAT picture---watch for it.

(Oh there are also the mandatory "snapped like twig" pictures of the 2 foot diameter maple trees---but you have seen that before!!)
Click to expand...

Yes I have seen that...2 of them just across the driveway about 15 feet from my house...one snapped off and the other uprooted. God being good both fell awas from the house. I hate to think of what they'd done if they fell toward it.
 
Age a factor

DCBluesman said:
ed4copies said:
(The rafters in those things are 6x6 or 8x8 and weigh about 100 pounds a piece in 20 foot lengths.)
Click to expand...

You must have some light maple in Sturtevant. By my back of the napkin calculations, that's over 100 board feet of maple and probably over 400 pounds per 20-foot length. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Depending on how old the barn is and the style of construction they could be even bigger than that. I had two barns constructed near the beginning of the last century and had post and beam construction with the corner posts being around 12 X 12 hand hewn and some of the beams being as much as 10 X 10 hand hewn....we had one post that was 14 X 15. I was probably VERY heavy.
 
Glad you guys are OK! If if gets worse and you need a crappy carpenter with REALLY good tools, just call. I think we can be there in 24 hours.
 
alphageek said:
LOL.. Jeff you had me going there... I almost said "singular!!??" But good old google proves to me you have more than one street light :rolleyes::rolleyes:
Click to expand...

lol, yea, we have 3 street lights, and about 5 cops, but seriously, we did have a small tornado come through town yesterday. It did take out the power on the south side and a cop was placed at the street light to direct the traffic, which is pretty funny since we have very little of that. This is a pretty small town, but we do have a McDonalds and 2 Chineese restaurants!
 
I just saw a shot of the barn on the local news in Denver this morning. They showed several shots of storm damage in Wisconsin and the barn was one of them. It was the local news program on NBC.
 
areaman said:
Ed, glad everyone is alright, but 5 miles isn't near far enough away!
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Actually, tornadoes and "shear winds" (straight line high winds) are SO localized, a quarter mile is fine. Neighbor lost a huge maple a couple years ago, I lost a tree, both in a direct line, north to south.

My house was not more than 20 feet off that line, but was completely undamaged. :eek::eek:
 
We are getting those straight line winds big time over here too. It wasn't easy bringing the Semi back empty.

Our town traffic light is still out too, been 48 hrs now. 87 yr old Ms Daisy has been calling the town hall all day long I hear, because she wants to go into town and get some milk, but it isn't safe crossing the intersection. The Mayor said he thinks it's the lightbulb inside burned out. He called in the local undertaker because he's pretty handy at fixing his car. Of course, the undertaker didn't have a ladder big enough, so then uncle Jeb had to drive over with the ladder. The two of them extended the ladder up to the light, but everytime they stepped on the ladder, it would fall over, so the light remains out. There's a town meeting scheduled at 7pm to discuss the issue and hopefully come up with a good solution to change the light bulb.
 
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Lots of silly things happen in these little towns...it's great!

Our newspaper is kinda like the good ole days...it's all about the local stuff.

You know...
George got mangled in his plow...wife is selling his junk on Tuesday.
Little Billy's Goat got first place for having a shiny coat.
There's serving green eggs at the Church on Sunday.
Traffic light still aint workin. :biggrin:
 
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