Wauwatosa East High School's softball team is practicing indoors this week after a storm overnight April 13 damaged the outfield fence at the playing field next to Longfellow Middle School.
Wind from the storm appears to have uprooted most of the chainlink fence, dropping it in the softball team's left field and center field. A banner attached to the fence may have creating a kind of sail for the wind to catch and lift.
As of the start of the school day April 14, the fence could be seen crumpled on the artificial turf, while the portion of fence behind right field remained in tact where the end of the team banner reads "RAIDERS."
Tosa East Athletic Director Andrew Thompson responded to a Tosa Forward News email, saying the damage "gave me flashbacks to August, when I woke up to texted about Hart Park" — a reference to the flood damage at the Hart Park stadium that is still being repaired this spring.
Thompson didn't have an estimate on what repairs to the softball field would entail, though he said contractors would be visiting the site April 14 to determine the extent of the damage.
"All of our games this week were scheduled to be away, we are fortunate there," Thompson said. "Tosa Titans and Shock [youth baseball and softball teams] will lose some times. And unfortunately, it will have a trickle effect on their reservations, as the high school team has to move games around to get them in."
UPDATE: By April 15, the fence was back in place, though Thompson said he was waiting for clearance from the contractor before opening the field to activities again.
The National Weather Service's office in Sullivan, in response to a Tosa Forward News inquiry, said the maximum known wind gust from the local storm was 61 mph, as reported just before 2 a.m. April 14 at Timmerman Airport, about 4 miles northwest of the softball field.
"Precipitation totals across the Milwaukee metro varied from 0.28 inch to 0.49 inch," meteorologist Michaela Heeren said by email. "Wauwatosa reports were clustered between 0.46 and 0.49 inch for the 24 hours containing the rainfall last night."
Additional damage from the storm system is being reported across the Milwaukee area. The strong wind ripped away a billboard on South 27th Street in Milwaukee, according to the Journal Sentinel. WISN-TV reports a tree fell in the storm, damaging cars and a home near 20th Street and Greenfield Avenue.
Residents from Milwaukee to Fort Atkinson alerted WTMJ-TV to additional scenes of storm damage. Power outages also have been reported across the region. More than 20,000 We Energies customers were without power as of noon April 14, according to the utility's outage map, with the largest outages in Pewaukee and Whitewater.
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