Glass shards, bits of siding and trim, and just about anything that the wind could blow now litters the streets and lawns of Westby after a severe thunderstorm carrying hail swept through Tuesday, April 14.
Witnesses to the storm say they saw nickel-sized pieces of frozen precipitation start falling around 4:30 p.m., This lasted about five to 10 minutes.
Then ice the size of golf balls came.
Westby resident Ashley Nelson, who lives on State Street, said when she heard loud cracking coming from her roof, she looked outside and saw the golf ball-sized hail coming down.
“In mere moments, that turned into even bigger hail,” said Nelson. “I heard windows shattering around me while my kids were safe in the basement.”
Nelson said she joined her two children in the basement and they huddled in the corner as their house continued to get pummeled. When the loud cracking stopped, Nelson emerged to see her deck and the ground covered in balls of ice.
“I told my children it was safe to come out and we looked at the hail all around us,” said Nelson. “To say we were heartbroken is an understatement.”
Nelson said she used to chase storms and that she had "never seen anything like this" before.
“The hail core on the radar looked like it would do minimal damage and miss Westby,” said Nelson. “Then it hooked right to us.”
Rural Westby resident Louise Wood did not experience the storm within city limits but said her father, who lives in a mobile home on the south side, was alone when the storm rolled through.
“[The storm] blew the glass in, around, and on top of my dad,” said Wood. “There was glass all over my dad and it scared him quite a bit. We are finding shards of glass on the opposite side of the house because of how bad the hail blew inward.”
At 5 p.m., Vernon County Sheriff Torgerson provided an update via video on Facebook saying that his officers in Westby reported baseball-sized hail and many damaged vehicles.
"One of my deputies sustained minor injuries," said Torgerson. "[There was] a lot of damage to a patrol vehicle. One of our Coon Valley squads was also damaged."
After the hail passed, residents started cleaning as best as they could. Efforts continued into Wednesday.
THE AFTERMATH
In the wake of Tuesday’s destruction, downtown Westby business owner Bob Hill spent Wednesday morning cleaning up his two buildings just north of the Westby Rod & Gun on Main Street. He said one fared the storm a little better than the other. The main windows of his future record shop weren’t harmed in the Tuesday evening barrage, but the big windows just south weren’t so fortunate.
“Luckily these windows survived,” said Bob Hill. “But our building next door… not so lucky”
The upstairs apartment windows were also not so lucky.
“They had hail in their living room,” said Hill.
Down the street and up around the block at the intersection of State and Hegge Streets, the broad west-facing side of the last tobacco shed in Westby resembled a block of red Swiss cheese. Six of eight main and upper-floor windows were broken.
Building owner Garland McGarvey of Coon Valley said one basement window was shattered.
“There was glass 20 to 25 feet across the room,” said McGarvey. "I still can't believe how this happened."
McGarvey, a member of the Westby Area Historical Society, said in all his years in the area he'd never seen a hailstorm like this before.
Fellow historical society members Julie Pedretti and Patty Nelson stopped by the tobacco shed to check on McGarvey and talked about their experiences Tuesday evening and the damage they've seen around town.
Pedretti reported that she had a couple broken windows and a totaled car, but that she "didn't have it as bad" as some other people.
Nelson said her neighborhood wasn't hit as bad either, but recalled what the storm was like.
"[The hail] was coming in sideways," said Nelson. "It was deadly... I never want to experience that again, it was horrible."
Down State Street to the west, homeowner Chad Lomen is grateful to have wood siding which he says, “needs to be repainted and that’s about it.”
“We only had five broken windows,” said Lomen. “Just one [of the windows], the hail actually came into the house. We covered up that one but the storm windows helped a lot.”
Lomen's yard was full of branches and bright green tree buds that Remy, a golden retriever and beagle mix puppy, was content on chewing. Lomen walked around to the alley to point out the west-facing windows while a freshly dimpled car sat off to the side on the grass.
The sunroof and back window of his daughter’s gray Subaru sedan were completely gone. Lomen said they just took the insurance off of it because she bought a new car last week.
"We're like 'what could happen to it sitting in the yard?'" said Lomen, with a laugh.
That old car wasn't the only victim.
Multiple cars were spotted with tarpaulin-and-bungee-cord covers with shards of colored glass on the ground. Many people said that any car that was outside at the time received some sort of damage.
"I saw some of the vehicles that were driving in," said Lomen. "Their windshields were just demolished, like someone hooked up a pitching machine and just aimed at their car."
The strangest thing that the hail did was open one of Lomen’s extra propane tanks.
“The hail spun the knob,” said Lomen. “I thought ‘oh my God, the hail poked a hole in my tank.’ Nope, it was just spun open.”
Two houses down, Eliza Kakanakou was picking up her front yard with her two young daughters and dog, Archie. Kakanakou said she and her family were outside just before the storm rolled in Tuesday around 4:30 p.m. They went inside to clean up and were watching the storm through their windows.
“Then the windows started breaking,” said Kakanakou. “So we said ‘let’s go back where there’s no windows in the house.’”
She saved a piece of hail in the freezer just in case their insurance company didn’t believe her.
Kakanakou said that contractors started streaming into the neighborhood as soon as the hail had passed Tuesday evening.
“We were just out here patching stuff up and there were like 10 contractors,” said Kakanakou. “There’s a reason the sheriff put out a statement saying ‘only hire local [contractors]’”
BEWARE OF SCAMS
Sheriff Torgerson shared a Facebook post from the Vernon County Emergency Management page that urges property owners to be cautious of scammers and "storm chasers".
"It's sad isn't it?" said Shane Buros of Caledonia. Buros, formerly of Westby, was back in town to help his niece fix up her house. He gestured to a pick-up truck with an unfamiliar business name driving by, one of many that had rolled into town after the hail storm.
"They're just leeches," said Buros.
Buros was referring to 'storm chasers', a term reserved for contractors that travel from town-to-town, state-to-state following damaging weather events. They're characterized by their high-pressure sales tactics.
However, not all contractors are this way. Many local repair businesses, like 2Brothers Contracting out of West Salem, were seen out and about, boarding up windows and patching roofs to help residents in anticipation of more rainfall Wednesday evening. Cashton Building Supply-branded plastic was also seen covering up holes in siding and windows.
Cashton Building Supply's Kortney Kuhse said that they experienced their own hail situation in rural Cashton a couple years ago, but said 'that was nothing compared to this'. Kuhse was caught in Tuesday's storm and witnessed the hail firsthand between Westby and Cashton on Highway 27.
"My dad [Kevin Kirking] and I just feel so bad about what happened. We know how hard it can be to go through disaster," said Kuhse. “We experienced the flooding in 2018 and had help then, so we want to make sure we can return that favor.”
"We know that if we were in a situation like this that Westby would help us as well," said Kuhse. "It's a big time for neighbors to just lend a hand."
AROUND THE STATE
On Wednesday, April 15, Gov. Tony Evers signed Executive Order #289, declaring a state of emergency in response to the damage cause by storms that swept through Wisconsin on April 13. Several communities experienced 'devastating winds, tornadoes, hail, and heavy rainfall, resulting in flooding, structural damage, evacuations, and power outages', according to the press release from the Governor's office.
Just east of Vernon County, around 6 p.m. or about an hour after the hail had stopped in Westby, an EF3 tornado touched down in Union Center. Channel 3000 reported that it was the "first tornado of that level" in Wisconsin since 2021.
According to the National Weather Service, winds were estimated to have reached 140 mph. Multiple homes were damaged, with one confirmed to have been completely flattened.
No injuries were reported.
