Fargo, ND F5 Tornado – June 20, 1957

The following is paraphrased from interview with warning meteorologist the night of the Fargo F5:

I was working along on a swing shift in my 1st year in the Weather Bureau.  There were plenty of thunderstorms over the previous weeks, which likely added to moisture through the area.  The evening had the feel of thunderstorms, and I was “almost sure” there would be thunderstorms that evening.  I wrote up a severe thunderstorms statement templates once getting on shift around 4-5pm anticipating severe weather (this is great considering limited data at best for the era). We had teletype circuits connected to radio and TV stations, so they could pick up a receiver and talk directly to them.  Also had direct line to Kansas City to transmit severe weather warnings.  Air defense radar near Finley, they were not cooperative.  They would contact Fargo Wx. Bureau w/ radar reports at times, none that night.  Had some difax maps, plot 850,700,500 twice daily, BIS and STC RAOBS. Did sfc map generally every 3 hours (at least every 6 hours).

There was a line of storms approaching from west, eventually noticed what he thought was a TOR, called tower and confirmed it was a TOR near Wheatland/Mapleton and it did not last very long.  This was about 45 min before Fargo tornado. It was a small CB attached to the SW of the line. He prepared/sent the statement for the tornado, “we only had our eyeballs” and that was about all, no radar, satellite etc. “They really in a sense didn’t need anymore warning”, as you could see it coming in from the west. Called his wife in S. Moorhead and told her to get in basement.

As line approached, storm was blue/green with mesocyclone rotating rapidly and very evident above collar cloud after initial touchdown from separate storm?  Telephone began ringing off the hook.  PA showed up, Vern Hendrickson to assist with Conelrad (Civil Defense Warning System/ WDAY was primary). RAWARK to KC telling them about tornado.

Talking to Radio/TV stations live at this point about approaching tornado, cloud moving into W. Fargo , with cloud base between 2500-3000ft “low for a tornado” (low LCL heights!) Tornado dropped out of cloud, beautiful cone shaped with sharp point on ground. Point became less sharp and larger as it went through Golden Ridge area and widened to about ¾ mi wide.  Lost all communications and went outside to observe tornado. Sides of houses were seen flung around the tornado, was about 3/4mi from tornado, east of Moorhead roped out.  Tornado was initially due west of airport, then dropped south and turned east, then northeast into MN. (this lines up well w/ Fujita track) 

Many people were seen evacuating the city, and it could have been much worse had tornado tracked along crowded roads from people evacuating.

Tail cloud was observed extending 1 mile from parent wall cloud, precip occurred after tornado passed, none before and not much to south of fargo, even south fargo .  Back edge of squall line, extended quite a ways north of Fargo.