Your weather eye

Posted at 6:06 PM on May 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Weather

The tornado warnings that sprouted in the north metro late this afternoon, were enough to make us wonder whether the fancy TV weather equipment gives us a false sense of security. The flashing orange and red maps on TV do a great job of telling us where the threat is, but they can also imply -- falsely -- that there are no threats elsewhere.

Shortly before 6 p.m. Sunday, the TV weather guy announced that "all of the activity that suggests rotation" had moved well into Wisconsin," and that Minnesota was out of the woods. Two minutes later, a heavy wind hit New Cut's Woodbury bureau, and we -- and a lot of the neighbors who also wisely decided to check the sky for themselves -- spied a rotating series of clouds above us.

A few minutes later, I checked the weather radar loop on the MPR site and, sure enough, a little finger of orange -- I guess that's bad -- developed over my city just before it all moved over to Wisconsin.

In the end, all we got was a blizzard ... of apple blossoms...

... and a reminder at the start of the summer season that it's wise to put at least as much stock in what you see in the sky, as what you see on TV.

We understand there was plenty of hail and some damage in the Hugo area. Send us your photos and we'll post them.

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