The Menasha EF-3 tornado has been officially rated, and the number finally matches what residents saw with their own eyes when they stepped outside Monday morning. The National Weather Service confirmed on Tuesday that the twister carving through the Fox Valley reached EF-3 strength, packing winds of 140 miles per hour.

The storm stretched 1,500 yards across at its widest and stayed on the ground for 12.1 miles, cutting a path through Appleton, Neenah and Menasha. It flattened homes, gutted businesses, tore down power lines and snapped mature trees like kindling.

Now comes the part nobody prepares for: the cleanup.

What People Saw Before It Hit

Residents describe a sky that changed character in a matter of minutes.

Taylor Folske of Menasha remembers the light going out first. She and others moved to a back window and watched clouds churn in one direction, then reverse. A pale blue shelf cloud rolled in overhead. Then the sirens started.

Ellen McCoy heard it before she understood it. A loud whistle, she said, and when she looked outside the trees were thrashing in every direction while rain slammed against the glass hard enough to be alarming on its own.

Getting home afterward was its own ordeal. Mickey Mueller said a six-mile drive took an hour and forty minutes. Drivers were mostly patient, she said, but patience does not prepare you for what waits at the other end.

She described arriving to what looked like carnage.

A Community Doing Math It Doesn’t Want to Do

Mueller has never seen destruction on this scale in her own neighborhood, and her worry has already shifted from the storm itself to the months that follow it.

She had guessed three weeks of recovery. Someone corrected her to eight. Either estimate raises the same problem, and she said it plainly: you cannot abandon everything to go to work, but you also cannot stop working, and working from home is not an option when the house is damaged and the power is out.

That squeeze is going to hit nearly every household in Menasha in some form.

Winnebago County executive Gordon Hintz said reviewing the photos and video was difficult. He described a well-established community where families have owned the same houses for decades, and where the storm left homes, trees and infrastructure looking as though a bulldozer had simply driven through. He expects long days ahead but said the area will get through it.

One piece of good news held: as of Monday evening, Winnebago County officials had reported no fatalities.

Streets, Barricades and a Curfew

Some Menasha streets remain impassable, largely because of downed lines. Emergency officials are asking the public to follow a few basic rules while crews work.

Stay out of the hardest-hit areas unless you have a genuine reason to be there.

Treat every downed line as live, without exception.

Do not drive around barricades or enter zones closed off by emergency personnel.

Keep non-essential travel to a minimum so first responders and utility crews can move.

Call 911 only for actual emergencies, and route everything else through non-emergency channels.

A curfew is also in effect in Menasha until further notice, running from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. It covers anyone on foot, on a bicycle or in any vehicle across public streets, highways, alleys, parks, school grounds, beaches, cemeteries, playgrounds, public buildings and other public spaces. People whose jobs require them to be out during those hours are exempt.

The Power Situation

Thousands of Fox Valley customers were still in the dark Tuesday.

Matt Cullen said crews serving Wisconsin Public Service customers have made real headway, restoring service to more than 19,000 accounts since the storms began. We Energies has brought back power to more than 79,000 customers across the state.

The remaining work is harder. Cullen said damage to lines and poles is extensive, which means full restoration will take time rather than hours. Residents can track progress through the utility outage map.

In Outagamie County, executive Tom Nelson said a section of Appleton remains inaccessible, specifically the area around Prospect Avenue in the southwestern part of the city near Xavier High School.

Where to Go if You Need Help

Three emergency shelters are open for people displaced or otherwise affected:

Christ the Rock Church, W6254 US Highway 10/114 in Menasha, which is open for overnight stays.

The Elks Lodge, 328 Nicolet Blvd in Menasha.

Calvary Bible Church on Oakridge Road in Neenah.

How to Help Without Getting in the Way

The instinct to show up and start hauling debris is strong, but coordination matters more than enthusiasm in the first days after a storm like this.

Volunteer Fox Cities has set up a sign-up page for anyone wanting to assist with response and recovery. For now, volunteers are being kept on standby while officials work out where help is actually needed. Signing up early means you can be deployed quickly once those needs are defined.

There is one category of help being accepted right away. Anyone with a food truck, prepared meals or drinking water is asked to report to the north parking lot of the former UW–Oshkosh Fox Cities campus.

Bottled water, emergency supplies and other donations should be dropped at the campus entrance next to the Barlow Planetarium. The site opened Tuesday and has portable restrooms and handwashing stations available.

Getting there: take the Highway 441 exit at Oneida Street, head south on Oneida, turn west onto Midway Road and enter the campus donation area. To leave, return east on Midway Road, then north on Oneida Street back to Highway 441.

The Weeks Ahead

County departments are coordinating messaging so residents know the most useful ways to contribute rather than duplicating effort or clogging damaged roads.

For a community where many families have lived on the same block for a generation, the physical rebuild is only part of it. The trees that shaded those streets are gone. The landmarks people navigate by are gone. That kind of loss takes longer to repair than a power line.

But nobody died. In a storm that wide and that strong, that is not a small thing, and it gives Menasha something to build on.