Overview
- A tornado the National Weather Service called “extremely dangerous” tracked from near Appleton through Menasha and moved over Lake Winnebago before dissipating after about 20 minutes on Monday.
- Local officials and imagery show widespread structural damage including stripped roofs, collapsed buildings, overturned vehicles, downed trees and snapped power poles across Menasha, Appleton and Fox Crossing.
- Large-scale outages followed the storm with utility maps and aggregators reporting tens of thousands to several hundred thousand customers affected across Wisconsin and neighboring states as crews evaluate transmission and local damage.
- Emergency responders opened shelters, urged residents to shelter in place and restricted travel to let teams search for victims, secure hazards such as gas leaks and downed lines, and clear blocked roads.
- NWS rapid-response survey teams are assessing damage to determine an official intensity rating after a single-source preliminary EF-2 report, and officials say casualty counts and final damage totals remain under verification.