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full description – content: Pilger tornado: The latest updates and continuing coverage
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full description – content: LINCOLN — Amid the shingles, lumber and tin swirling in the Pilger tornado, it appears for a second or two before falling back to the ground.
full description – content: A house.
full description – content: It’s there in a storm chaser’s video of the June 16 tornado that took two lives along with millions of dollars worth of homes, farm equipment, commercial buildings and vehicles.
full description – content: Several weather experts who have studied the video agreed that the tornado appears to have picked up an entire house and tossed it back to earth like an empty matchbox. It’s happened before, they said.
full description – content: But has a tornado ever lofted a house from its foundation, rotated it in the sky and set it right side up nearly on the spot where it originally stood?
full description – content: That’s what some have speculated on social media after an Internet search turned up a photo, taken in the aftermath of the Pilger tornado, of a two-story, wood-frame house. Some believe that the battered, tilted structure is the same house that flew.
full description – content: “Crazy things happen in tornadoes. I can’t say it didn’t happen,” said Van DeWald, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Valley.
full description – content: Others, however, said it’s almost impossible to imagine a house surviving a sky fall.
full description – content: Throughout human history, the awe-inspiring power of tornadoes has inspired folklore along with fear, said Ken Dewey, an applied climate professor at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln who has studied severe weather for 30 years.
full description – content: Think of Aunt Mabel’s piano found five miles from her parlor, still in perfect tune, Dewey said. He even saw one “historical account” of a man on his horse given a dizzying detour by a tornado.
full description – content: “ ‘The Wizard of Oz’ didn’t help,” Dewey said. “People spin these yarns, and they become fact.”
full description – content: In this case the yarn-spinning was set in motion about two weeks ago, when Dick McGowan of Norman, Oklahoma, headed for Nebraska in the hope of getting some severe-weather footage. McGowan, 33, is a full-time storm chaser who said he has witnessed some 200 tornadoes over his 11-year career.
full description – content: “It’s not the adrenaline. It’s more of a beauty thing for me,” he said. “I’m mesmerized by tornadoes. I don’t climb rocks or sky-dive. Storm chasing is my thing, my passion.”
full description – content: Behind the wheel of his Toyota Camry, McGowan saw the first of the June 16 tornadoes hit farmsteads north of Stanton. The chasers eventually stopped about a half-mile north of Pilger to film the violent “stovepipe” tornado shortly before it crossed Nebraska Highway 15.
full description – content: As he looked through the viewfinder, he didn’t notice Pilger until the EF4 with up to 200 mph winds was about 200 yards away from the village.
full description – content: “No, don’t hit the town! No!” McGowan said to his girlfriend as the tornado crossed the highway and bore down on the community of 352, ripping apart structures and spinning the debris in the vortex.
full description – content: After McGowan posted his video on TVNweather.com, a storm chaser in Chicago noticed the solid object that appears at the 2-minute, 39-second mark. The Chicago chaser went on Twitter and paired a screenshot of the “flying house” with the photo of the house on the ground, and the debate took off.
full description – content: Some have speculated that the structure in the video is more likely a grain bin. But three weather experts contacted by The World-Herald ruled out a bin, saying the object in the video clearly has a frame. Dewey, however, suggested it could be a detached two-car garage.
full description – content: So what do the experts think about the possibility that it was a house and that it landed more or less intact near its foundation?
full description – content: The general consensus: not likely, but not impossible.
full description – content: Jack Boston, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, The World-Herald’s weather consultant, called the “flying house” an amazing piece of video that shows the raw power of a tornado.
full description – content: “There’s so many surprising things that have been documented in tornadoes,” he said. “Driving straw into a wall, sucking all the water out of a swimming pool. So who can say?”
full description – content: McGowan, the storm chaser, said he once saw an approaching tornado tip over a semitrailer and then, as the tornado passed over it, set it back on its wheels.
full description – content: Because everything surrounding the house in the photo had been leveled by the tornado, McGowan said he’s mostly convinced it was the same structure in his video.
full description – content: The Pilger tornado has already drawn comparisons with the 2004 Hallam, Nebraska, tornado, another destructive EF4.
full description – content: In Hallam, a house was lifted off its foundation and left on its side, mostly intact. But in that case, the homeowner saw what happened from his basement and said the house did not loft very high off the foundation.
full description – content: Video footage from inside tornadoes shows that they typically obliterate houses. Rarely do structures hold together long enough to take flight, as they are subjected to tremendous wind force and a barrage of bricks, rocks and other debris.
full description – content: Krista Giese of Norfolk, Nebraska, is an amateur storm chaser who stopped in Pilger to offer first aid in the moments after the tornado blasted through. She shot the photo of the house on the ground and has participated in the debate.
full description – content: She compared the location of the flying house in the video with the location of the house on the ground in a post-storm aerial photo. The two locations seem about right, Giese said. Still, she struggled to chase away logic.
full description – content: “It’s one of those things I don’t think we’ll ever know the answer to, no matter how much video we watch,” she said. “It’s an amazing possibility.”
full description – content: Corey Savage of Pilger, who lived in the house Giese photo graphed, provided a unique perspective.
full description – content: On the afternoon of June 16, Savage took his two young children to the basement — his wife was at work — and then went outside to watch for the storm. He pointed his smartphone toward the southwestern sky and hit “record.” About then, a hailstone pitted with dirt and grass smacked the ground at his foot. When he looked back up, a tornado filled the phone screen.
full description – content: He ran for the basement. His ears popped. Glass shattered, wood exploded, the house quaked.
full description – content: Savage huddled beneath a blanket with his daughter, son, darkness and terror. The wind reached in, snatched the blanket and pummeled his head and legs with debris.
full description – content: Then it was over.
full description – content: He lifted a concrete block from the lap of his uninjured toddler son, who was strapped into a car seat. Then he heard his 4-year-old daughter scream. He dug through rubble until he reached a water heater atop a door. Underneath the door, his daughter was pinned, and not moving.
full description – content: “Then she stood up,” Savage said. “She cried, and I cried. I was so happy. I thought she was going to be paralyzed.”
full description – content: They could see sky. As natural gas and sewage poured into the basement, they crawled out with the help of a stranger.
full description – content: Before the house was razed, Savage and his wife, Juliana, returned to collect belongings. He marveled at how the house had been denuded of its modern siding. Inside, major cracks split the walls, and doors frames were out of alignment.
full description – content: He also noted that the door and the water heater that had trapped his daughter were not from his house.
full description – content: And the weirdest thing: The house had rotated about 180 degrees.
full description – content: During an interview late last week, Savage, 25, said he had not yet seen the video of the flying house. He had been too busy trying to land on his own feet.
full description – content: If he feels up to it someday, he’ll watch. But his mind is already made up.
full description – content: The tornado took his house for a wild ride.
full description – content: Contact the writer: 402-473-9587, joe.duggan@owh.com
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