In Fargo, North Dakota today, activities are being held to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the June 20, 1957 Fargo tornado. A luncheon will feature retired NWS Fargo employees from 1957 and Dr. Joe Schaeffer, the Director of the Storm Prediction Center. There will be a ribbon bike and walking tour of the tornado path. There will be a community picnic from 5 to 8 with church bells from 7-7:33, when the tornado struck along with a moment of silence and reflection.
The tornado struck the northern side of Fargo during the early evening. In describing the devastation of the North Side, the Fargo Forum simply reported, “Golden Ridge is gone.†The Golden Ridge subdivision was where some of the worst destruction and the most deaths occurred. Six children from one family died when the tornado devastated their home, which did not have a basement. Ironically, the children were playing the yard when a neighbor, alerted to the tornado’s approach tried to get the children to leave with them in a car to safety.
The Fargo Tornado is significant in many ways. Obviously it was deadly and destructive tornado that struck a populated city. It killed 12 people and injured another 150. A total of 1,300 homes were destroyed. It also was part of a significant contribution to the science of tornado forecasting. There were advance alerts and warnings. But most importantly, the tornado was studied in great detail by Ted Fujita. The tornado researcher collected hundreds of photographs, home movies and television film to perform a complete study on the life cycle of the supercell and mesocyclone that produced the tornado.
Fujita identified features of the supercell thunderstorm including the wall cloud, the tail cloud and the collar cloud. The watershed study of the supercell, published in 1960, showed that these formations were not random occurrences, but symptoms of processes that are ongoing in a severe thunderstorm and therefore important visual clues to what the storm is going to do. The groundbreaking report advanced the science of tornado forecasting in a tremendous way.
Here is a link to the Fargo Forum’s special webpage on the tornado:
