Twin Cities Twister Drops Debris 20 Miles Away
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- If life was like the movies, nothing would surprise us about the crazy tricks of tornadoes.
When the storms struck Sunday, 10-year-old Taylor Aho of East Bethel knew he was not just seeing things, but he was certainly surprised.
"It was cloudy and rainy and it started hailing," said Aho. "Then I saw parts of roofs fly over. Then, I saw the square."
It was a big square, flipping and fluttering, high up in the clouds. Taylor's mother Karen Aho saw it, too.
"We both saw this big thing come down from the sky," she said.
They watched the object hit the trees in their back yard and fall to the ground. When the storm let up, they trekked to the back of their property to investigate.
The mystery square from above turned out to be an 8-foot-tall, thick Plexiglas window or door. It has a heavy aluminum frame and appears it may have come from a commercial building rather than a home. It landed intact, upright on its edge and resting against a tree trunk.
"That's got to weigh 25 to 30 pounds," guessed Taylor's father Mark Aho, as he hoisted it off the ground.
The Ahos say, oddly, there was barely even a breeze when the object fell. They are speculating that it was carried all the way from the north side of Minneapolis where block after block of buildings were shredded.
"If it came from north Minneapolis," Mark Aho said, "it came 22 to 23 miles from where the storm damage was. It came a long way in the sky."
Added Taylor, "It got up high enough where the wind (could) just take it up (with) the clouds."
Should we be at all surprised Taylor has discovered a sudden interest in meteorology?
"Tornadoes are so fast," he said. "It's interesting how they move, the kind of damage they can do. I think I may want to be a tornado chaser when I grow up."
