For one couple in Spicer, vantage point offers front-row view of approaching funnel cloud

SPICER -- Dorie Duininck looked out the door leading to her deck Tuesday afternoon and called out to her husband Todd, "Look at the clouds."

As they watched the clouds turning and churning in the sky, she grabbed her cell phone and started taking pictures with its camera.

Duininck's images caught the formation of a funnel cloud as it dropped from the clouds on its way to Spicer.

She took the photos from the deck of their home on the south side of Elkhorn Lake.

"Not only the clouds were turning; it was the rain and everything," she said. "It was amazing to see."

The Duinincks estimated that they were about a mile away from the storm's path. "We were just lucky," she said.

Their daughter had been in St. Cloud and just missed the storm. "As she got into the driveway, it was just hitting Spicer," Duininck said.

From their neighborhood, the storm didn't look that bad, she said, but when her husband went to pick up something at Jahnke's supermarket, he found it closed.

Duininck said she was glad she had her cell phone handy. "If I had to look for a camera, there's no way I would have those pictures," she said.