Coon Rapids Tornado 2008

We almost got sucked up into a tornado today whilst shopping at Costco in Coon Rapids!

After spending a pleasant afternoon of stimulating the economy, we ready to head home to admire our spoils. Around 4:30 p.m., we had finished checking out at Costco and were heading for the doors. There were several people ahead of us in the line
where they check your receipt against your cart of stuff. We saw that the clouds were getting really dark, and Bobi said look at the wind.

At this point, several Costco minions hauled butt for the front doors. The chatter on the radios was that they could not get the outside outside doors closed because of the wind. We then heard on one radio that there was a tornado over Menard's, which was just to the east of Costco.

We then saw the big metal shutter over the inside of the front door being pulled down, and the cart/receipt checker people starting to shoosh us further into the store. On the radios there were many calls to get the people to the middle of the store. We ended up standing next to a big rack of merchandise, when one of their people said to get away from there. At this point, we ditched the cart and headed further into the store.

At this point, we saw people camping out under the heavy metal tables in the clothing dept. We found an open space under a table of khaki pants. We crawled under that, and then heard assorted banging and crashing sounds from the roof. We stayed there for a few minutes as the storm passed over head. After a couple more minutes, we saw something sort of strange. Two employees went running towards the front of the store pushing a cart full of cookies! WTF? We've been evacuated to under a table of khaki pants and these people are making a run for it with loads of cookies? It seemed sort of surreal at that point.

Right after that, the all clear went out over the radios and we made out way out from under the table. Our adventure wasn't quite over yet!

This was a two part storm, with another section about 10 minutes behind the first. We got out the car and loaded the stuff and as we started out, heard stories on the radio of cars over turned on Highway 10, If we had left Costco 5 minutes earlier, that could of been us. We took the back roads home, with a large nasty looking cloud in hot pursuit!

We had enough time to grab the computer, weather radio, chuck the steaks in the fridge (priorities man, priorities.) and run for the basement. It was kind of anti climactic after that. The TV said there was a tornado warning for our part of the county, but we just heard a lot of rain, and a couple of booms of thunder.

I got a couple of neat picks of the storms after they were to the east of us. I also talked a little to Scott, our next door neighbor. While we were under the khaki pants table in Costco, he was out on the front step watching the tornado mosey on past to the north of Spring Lake Park. There wasn't any damage here, but it sounds like some houses in Hugo MN were damaged, no word of injuries.


After the storm