The National Weather Service confirmed seven tornadoes touched down in Walworth, Racine and Waukesha counties on Friday evening, pushing the total number of confirmed tornadoes in Southeast Wisconsin for the week of April 12 to 14. The storms hit between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., with four EF-0 tornadoes and two EF-1 tornadoes among them.
The strongest of Friday's storms tore through Walworth County first. Around 6:40 p.m., an EF-1 tornado with estimated peak winds of 100 mph touched down just north of School Section Road in Delavan near the Village of Darien, then tracked along State Road 11 into the Redwood Court neighborhood. It uprooted and snapped pine trees, tore sheet metal off a few outbuildings and toppled an empty concrete silo. Minutes later, around 6:46 p.m., another EF-1 tornado with 100 mph winds touched down near Turtle Creek and Klug Road in Delavan and lifted northeast through the northern portions of Comus Lake by Dam Road, where it uprooted or snapped multiple trees, pushed in metal doors on a large metal building and pulled shingles off a garage and a house.
The damage then moved east. Around 7:22 p.m., an EF-0 tornado with peak winds of 70 mph and a width of 50 yards traveled east-southeast along Spring Prairie Road in Burlington, ending on Lyons Road after uprooting trees, damaging tree limbs and tearing shingles off nearby roofs. About 10 minutes later, an EF-0 tornado with 70 mph winds and a width of 70 yards hit near Wisconsin Highway 83 and County Highway O north of Waterford, traveled east, uprooted and snapped trees and lifted a porta-potty onto a building before likely ending in the Tichigan State Wildlife Area.
The last three tornadoes struck after dark. Just south of Muskego, an EF-0 tornado around 7:52 p.m. with estimated peak winds of 70 mph and a width of 75 yards started near the intersection of Kelsey Drive and Keiser Lane and ended in the Big Muskego Lake Wildlife Area northeast of Keiser Lane, causing tree damage. At 7:55 p.m., an EF-0 tornado in northern Racine County near North Cape on the west side of US-45 packed 80 mph winds, tracked northeast toward 7 Mile Road and damaged a few trees and a barn, tearing the roof off that barn. One minute later, the final tornado to touch down in Southeast Wisconsin on April 17 was an EF-1 near the west side of US-45 in northern Racine County, with estimated peak winds of 100 mph, tracking northeast to County Line Road just south of Franklin in Milwaukee County.
The outbreak was not limited to one county line or one kind of damage. It was a weeklong run of storms that left everything from uprooted trees and torn shingles to a toppled silo and a barn roof stripped away. That is why Friday matters beyond the evening’s radar loop: it was the night the tally jumped, and the count now stands at 14 confirmed tornadoes for the week in Southeast Wisconsin.
For people in the path, the headlines are over but the cleanup is not. The confirmed track by track account shows how quickly the storms shifted from rural damage in Walworth County to tree loss and structural hits in Racine and Waukesha counties, then into Milwaukee County just after 7:56 p.m. The next step is not a new storm story but the lasting one: repairs, debris removal and the longer look at how a single Friday evening became the most damaging stretch of the week.
For readers tracking other weather swings, the same kind of fast-moving shift is playing out elsewhere too, from Pittsburgh Weather: Pleasant Friday Turns Stormy Saturday as Cold Front Nears to Columbus Weather: Showers arrive Thursday before Friday sun and Saturday storms.