Twin tornadoes killed two people and damaged dozens of homes Monday in Pilger, Neb.
A storm packing rare twin tornadoes tore through a tiny farming town in northeast Nebraska on Monday, killing two people, crumpling grain bins like discarded soda cans and flattening dozens of homes.
Capturing images of the severe storm as it ravaged Pilger, Neb., were two area storm chasers, Jared Farrer of Crawfordsville, and Terrence Cook, a Fountain County native who now resides in Iowa.
Farrer said he and Cook followed the storm from its birth Monday afternoon until it died out east of Sioux City, Neb. The two were near Pilger when the town was hit by one of the twin twisters, which roared for miles through northeast Nebraska. The tornadoes were roughly equal size, about a mile apart. The northern twister, confirmed as an EF4 tornado, struck the town before the two merged, according to the National Weather Service. The storm produced four tornadoes in all.
On Monday, Farrer drove the chase vehicle while Cook filmed from the front passenger seat.
“We knew we were seeing something like a chaser’s dream,” Farrer said as the twin tornadoes churned side by side just 200 to 300 yards away from the men. “The adrenaline was definitely pumping.”
Their video footage from Monday’s storm, which leveled Pilger and forced the evacuation of its 350 residents, made it to the Huffington Post, Washington Post, Associated Press and BBC News.
“I haven’t had much time to really look at all the places it has been posted, but it is plastered all over the place,” Farrer said.
The storm near Pilger formed wedge tornadoes.
A wedge tornado is wider than it is tall and is often violent. This type of tornado forms when the base of the thunderstorm cloud is close to the ground. Twin tornadoes of this strength are extremely rare, but have occurred before.
“About once a decade, a severe thunderstorm is able to produce multiple major tornadoes simultaneously,” said Mike Smith, senior vice president of AccuWeather.
It was during the Palm Sunday Outbreak of 1965 that twin wedge tornadoes were captured on film in Elkart, Ind.
A storm in central Oklahoma on May 3, 1999, also produced twin tornadoes, but only one was considered to be a wedge tornado.
“Monday was a very crazy day,” Farrer said. “Some of the footage we’ve posted shows debris flying, and that debris is from Pilger.”
Stanton County Sheriff Mike Unger estimated that 75 percent of Pilger was heavily damaged or destroyed. That included the grain co-op, bank, library, school, city offices and fire department.
Farrer and Cook stopped to assist a woman in the aftermath of the storm.
“She wasn’t injured, and for the most part her house was sparred, but there was an awful lot of storm damage around her,” Farrer said. “Once we made sure she was OK, we continued chasing the storm.”
Unfortunately, a fellow storm chaser discovered one of the town’s two fatalities — 5-year-old Calista Dixon. The other fatality from the storm was a motorist, David A. Herout, 74, of Clarkson, Neb. He died a few miles from Pilger. At least 19 were injured, some critically.
Monday’s storm was part of a larger system that tracked across the nation’s midsection.
A day after capturing images of the rare twin tornadoes in Nebraska, Farrer and Cook were in northern Iowa positioning themselves for another chase. Both plan to head to their respective homes later this week.
Farrer, a storm chaser since 2006 and amateur photographer, said this year’s tornado season has been below average. He believes the season is winding down.
“But you just never know when it comes to the weather,” he said.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
