The Fargo F5 Tornado of 1957 - The Science Behind the Slow-Moving Monster

On June 20th 1957, a powerful F5 tornado tore through northern Fargo North Dakota, killing 12. While a somewhat rare occurrence for a violent tornado at that northerly latitude, it was photographed and filmed by dozens of onlookers, resulting in the most well-documented violent tornado of its era. Although often overlooked in the history of violent American tornadoes, it played an important role in the development of the Fujita scale, and was critical in providing empirical evidence of mesocyclone structure, of which features like wall and tail clouds had yet to be officially named. Today we will examine the conditions that caused this tornado, the lives that it affected in Fargo and beyond, and pour over Dr. Fujita’s fantastic detailed analysis of the event that was, quite frankly, way ahead of its time.

Sources and Further Reading

Corrections (as they're discovered):

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:07 1950s Tornado Forecasting
5:14 The weather setup on 6/20/57
9:45 CORN???
11:10 The storms approach
14:12 The tornado's path
18:11 Munson family
19:27 Recovery efforts
19:47 Dr. Fujita's research

The Fargo F5 Tornado of 1957 - The Science Behind the Slow-Moving Monster

[weatherboxstudios]

Hey everyone! It's inevitable that after I put out a video, I find out I've gotten a few things wrong. People way smarter than me often email me with incredible information and details I had not previously known, so I decided to create a corrections document for this and future videos which will be linked in the description below the sources. The document will be updated whenever I receive emails/messages with great information that I can then pass on to viewers. Thanks guys!

[CeltonHenderson]

Never ceases to amaze me how ahead of his time Dr. Ted Fujita was, just incredible.

[StormGallade]

Born and raised in Fargo here. I've heard a ton of stories of this tornado and the devastation it brought to my hometown. The first time I had heard about it though was because of a picture in a restraunt downtown that I saw when I was young, and that very picture of this tornado kickstarted my interest for weather.

[jobes]

Holy cow, that Fujita report is insane and shows how one man's obsession can lead to great discovery and knowledge. And with as much detail that was included, obsession is an understatement.

[rschiwal]

My uncle was a Fargo Tornado survivor. Either he, or a family he knew (Family story) just bought a new car. It was hot and the kids were eating ice cream in the back seat. The mom was worried about the new upholstery getting stained by the dripping ice cream.
Later that day, the new car was totalled by a refrigerator.

[ErinsEnergy]

My best friend's dad was Richard Shaw, the man carrying out one of the children who passed away. I remember her showing me the newspaper clipping. She wasn't born for another 12 years, but to this day, is very proud of her brave dad.

[dragonlover]

dr. fujita putting together such a coherent and _accurate_ analysis of the storm is absolutely wild. what a legend; even knowing that he's a founding father of our understanding of severe weather, his work astonishes me every time

[cyd]

I experienced this tornado first hand! I was 10 years old at the time. We were on our way to a baseball game at the Twins stadium in north Fargo. As we headed toward the field from our car we saw the long tail funnel west of Fargo. We got in the car and went straight home. Turned on the radio and headed to the basement. The radio commentator said “it’s time to talk to the man upstairs”. In a few minutes the tornado struck. It sounded like a bunch of freight trains were going over our heads. We could see a little from the basement windows and saw debris flying past and tall trees bending over severely. It turned out that the main funnel was only about 1000 feet from where we were as the tornado had made a slight turn away from our house just a few city blocks before it would have hit us. We were lucky. Afterward it was like a disaster zone. Debris all over the yard including wood, blankets, and other personal stuff. We found hail the sizes of baseballs in the yard too. The next few days all you could hear was chain saws cutting up trees and other debris removal machines.
The whole experience was terrifying.

[_cmi]

Those animations were incredible. You don’t even see things like that decades later.

[maxdevos]

I live in what used to be called Golden Ridge, which is now called Madison Unicorn Park. The location of my current home is directly under the path of the tornado. Strong evidence of the tornado remains to this day; there is a distinct grouping of post-60s construction in the area which perfectly follows the path of the tornado. It is very obvious from the ground what was struck by the tornado.

I attend NDSU (what used to be the ND Ag College) and have taken many classes in Ladd hall. To see the tornado in the background of that image provides a level of gravity that I couldn't hope to put into words. It's difficult to describe the phenomenon of seeing pictures of places that are so ordinary to me, so everyday and mundane, such as the building where I have "that chem lab" or my own intersection on my favorite YouTube channel, especially in this context. Definitely the coolest thing I've experienced in awhile, but also the most harrowing.

It's also interesting that this event is so significant meteorologically, since from a weather perspective, Fargo is known for its catastrophic floods.

One last thing that I thought you might find amusing; Prairie Rose, the city you denoted to the south, is a super interesting (and annoying) anomaly. It's about 20 houses that are completely enclosed by Fargo, and exists as a tax haven for the residents to leech off of city resources (namely flood protection) without paying local tax. The City of Fargo and PR have been in on-and-off legal disputes for decades. It's super funny to see someone unfamiliar with the area see it and (understandably) mark it as a real city.

[bambambam]

Awesome video, and Dr. Ted Fujita was so ahead of his time with that research paper. What I found most impressive was that he triangulated the pictures taken of the tornado to there exact location, and made a basic video on the tornado moving.

[YeahNah]

Now that I have learned that corn sweat is a factor, I can better understand how the 1990 Plainfield, Illinois tornado was able to become so ferocious. Excellent channel and glad the algorithm finally set it in front of me.

[Alex-txdh]

19:00 I remember reading about this story a year ago, after researching f5 tornadoes. It made me cry to first imagine the dead children and mom seeing it firsthand, to then picture the dad opening the paper at the lobby or coffee shop and reading his children were ripped apart. It definitely felt real in that moment of research, which was a shift from scrolling through what looked like open walled dollhouses but were really the homes of Fargo.

[barrybrevik]

This is hilarious! Somehow, this video crept into my YouTube feed, and by coincidence, I was in that tornado, but I was only 1 year old, so I do not remember it. I was told that we heard it on the radio and immediately sheltered in the basement. They said that the sound as it passed over the house was much like a freight train.

I am grateful that this channel has posted this video so I could finally learn a lot more about an event that has been large in our family lore.

Mom and grandma would go on and on with their stories about how the roof came off every house in the neighborhood, and then it rained inside of them. The windows and contents of kitchen cabinets were reduced to powdered glass, which was deposited over every surface. Men came down from Canada, but there was still a lack of manpower, so the contractors could not meet the demand for home repairs, and many people went months before being able to live in their homes.

They also mentioned that the people "on the other side of the tracks" had no basements, so they fled, which caused a big traffic jam. Evidently, there was a trailer park that was hit, and those people who had not already fled were lucky to be alive.

My dad was the radio and tv farm reporter for WDAY at the time, and he had kept a scrap book full of newspaper articles about the tornado.

I am sorry to write so much; the video stimulated my memory of the stories.

[NancyCollazo-rkjh]

Born and raised in Fargo. I was 8 when this tornado occured. We stood on the west side of our house watching it for a long time until my mother herded all of us to the basement and we crawled under a couch that was turned over for shelter. My aunt and uncle who lived on the north side of Fargo, had a large wing back chair sucked through a small window and dropped into the neighbor's tree -chair was fully intact! Many very strange occurrences like that. Memories are very vivid of this tornado even after all these years!

[Version]

That picture was heartbreaking but I'm so glad you put it in. It's easy to get fascinated by these storms and forget the human cost. I have a 4.5 y/o daughter so that hit hard. Love your videos but this one was out of the park.

[cnmnnaturalist]

Dr. Fujita's impeccable attention to detail and using animation to illustrate the behavior of storms is always amazing to me. He had a real gift for documentation and I'm sure he had an insatiable curiosity.

This tornado was truly tragic, but I shudder to imagine what would happen if the same thing happened in Fargo today, as the population density is MUCH higher.

[OuterGalaxyLounge]

I love this way of telling the story, triangulating the photos with the locations as the storm tracked. I've heard about the Fargo tornado for many years but have never seen a presentation this good about it. Congratulations on this first-rate work.

[allthebest]

Work like this really makes YouTube shine... Its ability to bring us content creators like Weatherbox is a joy to behold. So many of us without this platform would never discover such educational, fascinating entertainment. Thank you so much for your hard work and for sharing your passion with us!

[PopLightBrown]

This has to be one of my favorite tornado events...one hour early lead time...unheard of! Dr. Fujita was THAT guy when it came to tornado research. I truly appreciate his work. I would love to see your video analysis on the Jackson (Candlestick Park), Miss. tornado of 1966.