May 06, 2015

50th anniversary of the 1965 Twin Cities tornado outbreak

50 years ago today, the Twin Cities metro area in Minnesota was hit by a series of severe thunderstorms which spawned 6 tornadoes...4 of them rated a violent F4. Some parts of Fridley...along and west of University and south of Mississippi St, got hit by not one but TWO of the F4 tornadoes that evening, about an hour apart. Depending on which dataset you use, there were 13 or 14 fatalities from the storms.

The local National Weather Service office has put together a pretty good summary of the day, located here. It includes radar images, damage photos, numerous stories from survivors, and the three known photographs of the tornadoes themselves. They have also created a short (21sec) video of a radar loop from the day. They had a camera set up to record the old radar screen, and the NWS recently digitized the film and created the video.

Cool images of what was surely a scary day for Twin Cities residents.

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