Rare, yes. Impossible, not really.

Sorry it's been so long since I wrote. Of course, I haven't had too much to write about, at least that I could think of. Until yesterday that is.

Hopefully, everyone made it home OK after the surprise tornado that hit Minneapolis yesterday. The National Weather Service has now confirmed that it was in fact, a tornado. It was all over the news yesterday, and even WCCO having a piece about the myth of, "tornados don't hit urban areas."

They certainly do. Yesterday's storm in Minneapolis may not have been as catastrophic as it could have been, but other downtowns in metro areas across the country have been much less fortunate, and just in the last few years. 1999, a massive F5 tornado tears through downtown Oklahoma City. In 1997, a tornado touched down near downtown Miami.

A tornado ripped through Fort Worth, TX in 2000. Just last year, a tornado tore through downtown Atlanta in March. If that wasn't unusual enough, a tornado had NEVER touched down in downtown Atlanta prior to last year's storm, which happened amidst the SEC college basketball tournament. And, stranger still, several years ago, a "microburst" hit downtown Salt Lake City. A funnel cloud that disappeared as quickly as it came down, but not before doing some small damage to the area, including the Delta Center (now the Energy Solutions Arena).

Yesterday's storm ripped through a neighborhood not too far from my office. Matter of fact, a good portion of the damage was just on the other side of 35W from us. At about 2pm, on what was just a normal day, our power went out. It had been raining steadily all day, but nothing prepared us (or anyone for that matter) for what was to come. We heard reports that a tornado was somewhere in the area.

As we moved downstairs, then the sirens decided to sound. Add to that, a belated birthday party, in a darkened basement with just a few candles and a flashlight. Everyone, including myself, on cell phones trying to get the latest from family members. It truly was a day to remember.

Incidentally, I remember the last tornado that touched down in that area, in 1981. I was all of 3 years old, but I remember that day vividly. We lived in a four-plex on Garfield Avenue South in Minneapolis. I vaguely remember hearing the EBS sound on TV, our power went out, and we went downstairs. The tornado hopped over our four-plex, but did some damage about four blocks from us. This was the same storm that took the roof off of Har Mar Mall in Roseville.

Funny, we spent all of August 18 talking about Brett Favre. How quickly the news can change. Oddly enough, the last time a big sports story happened in the Twin Cities, another incident took it's place shortly after. Kevin Garnett was traded to the Boston Celtics on Monday, July 30, 2007. Two days later, the 35W bridge collapsed.