Peggy Johnson of Rush City took this picture (at right) Saturday afternoon, June 11, around 4:22 pm, 4 miles northeast of Rush City.

She documented approximately seven minutes of development from wall cloud to funnel to the tornado that appeared to be approximately 1.5 to 2 miles east/northeast of the Johnson farm in a heavily wooded area along the Chisago/Pine county line.

"In addition to our reported sighting at 4:24 pm," she said, "there were other sightings reported to the National Weather Service."

0435 PM TORNADO 8 E PINE CITY 45.83N 92.80W
06/11/2005 PINE MN PUBLIC REPORTEDLY TOUCHED DOWN IN A FIELD 8 MILES EAST OF PINE CITY ALONG HIGHWAY 70
0505 PM TORNADO 7 W DANBURY 46.01N 92.52W
06/11/2005 PINE MN STORM CHASER SEVERAL LARGE TREES DOWN

Johnson said it is ironic that she should capture the tornado on film as her daughter, Elise, a meteorology student at Iowa State University is doing severe weather research. Currently, Elise is working at the National Severe Storm Lab in Norman, OK. She regularly heads out storm chasing with her weather buddies and has taken some good pictures of lightning but she hadn't seen tornadoes yet. Said Johnson, "Seems to me there's no place like home - we sure are rubbing this one in."

However, not to be outdone by the old folks at home, on Sunday, June 12, Elise embarked on a 15 1/2-hour, 700-mile storm chase throughout Oklahoma and Texas.

Although her group did not track a huge tornado, they were able to see and photograph two smaller tornadoes and some lightning. So now Elise has one up on her folks and has seen two. "I really don't think she has to worry about us getting more pictures of tornadoes unless they come to our farm again. I won't be out chasing tornadoes soon, I'll leave that to the professionals," said Johnson.

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