St. Rose of Lima to hold services at Boyd, helpers came from all around to clean up neighborhood

“We were helping all over Cadott,” Dan Marcheske said of himself and others who came on Wednesday to help out a friend touched by the tornado in Cadott the evening before. “We just kept going.” In the end, Marcheske and others spent most of Wednesday helping clear brush and cut down trees damaged by the storm Tuesday night, including on Maple, Main, and McRae Streets, he said. Working alongside Marcheske were employees from the Town of Bridge Creek and City of Augusta, though somewhat shy to give their names at first. As to how they had come to know about the storm, Marcheske said, “we watched it on the radar last night.” Helping along with him on Wednesday evening were Scott Williamson, Dennis Bergman Sr. and Dusty Bergman, while Dennis Bergman Jr. had reportedly been there earlier in the day. The group of five plus a local real estate agent named Shelly Finnessy were all volunteer, there to help the community.

What Marcheske and others watched on radar or in person ended up being classed by the National Weather Service as an EFO (low level) tornado, although a nonweather professional wouldn’t necessarily guess as much from the destruction left behind. Among the most visibly damaged places in Cadott, was the local Catholic church, called St. Rose of Lima after the 16th-century native of Lima, Peru and the first canonized saint to be born in the Americas. Having lost the front part of its roof on Tuesday, St. Rose of Lima will now hold its church services at St. Joseph’s in Boyd for the time being, both one on Thursdays and at 8:30 a.m. on Sundays. The instruments from the exposed choir loft at St. Rose is presently getting dried out, and possibly replaced.

As it turns out though, the church building damaged in Tuesday’s tornado is actually the second for the local congregation, being a 1ate 1950s-era replacement for the original church building that was built after St. Rose of Lima parish was first established back in the 1880’s. All Saints Parish Deacon Ned Willkom of Cadott, a retired dentist and grandfather, saw the tornado funnel descend firsthand, though he wasn’t at the church building itself.

“No, it was a tornado,” Willkom said of the reason for the damage when asked if straight line winds could be blamed. While straight line winds are more common than tornados, they tend to do their damage in a single direction rather than a rotating pattern, the difference being most discernible from the air.

Reportedly starting as a long narrow funnel witnessed by several onlookers, the recent tornado in Cadott then either crossed or hopped the Yellow River before widening into a large funnel with spiraling winds that topped out at 85 miles per hour. Ripping the north side front roof off the church building with a recently renovated basement, the EFO tornado tossed a large supporting roof timber towards the house across McRae street, though Willkom said this was stopped by a large tree in the way.

But while exposing the choir loft of St. Rose to the heavens was certainly among the more noticeable of the recent tornado’s effects, the church building which now forms part of All Saints Parish of Stanley-Boyd-Cadott, was not the only building in Cadott to sustain damage. Others lost house siding and roof sheeting, while one village resident lost an entire garage-like structure, its roof resting on the ground in an alley near the church. Boom trucks were also operating in the area from local tree businesses come to clean up tree limbs and other brush strewn about. At least one section of electrical wire was affected by the the Tuesday storm, laying in the grass near McRae Street.

According to the NOAA Severe Weather Database listed at geostat.org, past tornados that touched down in close proximity to Tuesday’s twister include an F3 tornado that touched down one mile west of Cadott by the Yellow River on June 4, 1958, an F3 tornado that touched down by Prosperous Ridge south of Edson on September 28, 1971 , and an F1 tornado that touched down to the east of Edson on Highway MM on June 15, 1976,. Meanwhile, the recent Tuesday tornado in Cadott reportedly had winds of 85 miles per hour. So what about the building damage to the church among many other places in town?

“We don’t know the full extent of the damages yet,” Father Felix of All Saints Parish said in relation to the Tuesday storm that ripped off the front of the church roof. “The main damage was to the roof which will require full replacement of the exterior including that which was completely torn out by the tornado,” he said. “The main area was the choir loft which might include the replacement of the organ, piano, and speakers.” Prior to Tuesday’s storm, St. Rose’s had undergone renovation in the basement for water leakage, but not everything can be planned for nor foreseen—or so it would seem.