Violence of Tornadoes

The memory of the tornado that struck here on June 20 still resonates in the minds of residents and neighbors. The loss of life that occurred remains in the forefront of those memories. An outpouring of volunteer help aided in the cleanup and much of that destruction wouldn’t be detected anymore by a stranger visiting the area. Driving along Highway 46, I noticed one ruined residence has been leveled over and landscaped. However, looking across the highway to the south a large field of broken tree trunks remains to remind us of the power and mindlessness of the twisting storm. The storm claimed three lives, making it the deadliest tornado to hit North Dakota since 1978.

A weather expert, namely Dr. Ted Fujita of the University of Chicago, applied his expertise to come up with a rating system named the Fujita Scale for the power of tornadoes. Using the Fujita Scale, meteorologists rated the primary Enderlin tornado as an F3 with winds up to 160 mph. The second, separate funnel probably peaked at about 135 mph which places it in the F2 category.

Fajita’s prime source of study was the Fargo tornado occurring in 1957 on the same date, June 20, which he rated as an F5 with winds ranging from 261 mph to 318 mph. He coined some of the terminology we’ve become familiar with such as “wall cloud.” I was fifteen years old at that time and was in the barnyard feeding our pigs.  A pervasive feeling settled on me as I looked to the sky and watched that wall cloud moving across the heavens. I’ll never forget the strange green color of the clouds and how deathly still the air became.

News reporting did not occur “on an active scene” like reporters practice today. Instead, it took a couple of days before in-depth stories appeared to tell us a story of what had happened in Fargo. A family of tornadoes (another Fajita coined term) travelled about 50 miles in North Dakota and Minnesota that reached about 500 yards across. Twelve people died with 103 being injured. Only one other F5 has been confirmed in the state, that which struck Fort Rice in 1953.

Recently we attended a program presented as part of the 75th Anniversary celebration for the Institute for Regional Studies at NDSU where two people spoke of their connection to the 1957 tornado. Catherine McMullen spoke first and told of her father, Cal Olson, the well-known news photographer, taking pictures with his Rolleiflex camera. One of his pictures of a man carrying a dead child from the wreckage earned a Pulitzer Prize. That child was one of a family of six children killed in one family.

Jamie Parsley spoke next. He is an episcopal priest in Fargo and also serves as an associate poet laureate of North Dakota. He, by the way, has connections to Sheldon, wrote a book titled Fargo 1957: An Elegy. Not yet born when the tornado struck, he nevertheless took inspiration to write it by recalling the death of  his mother’s cousin and her husband who perished as a result. His writing reminds us of the power of an F5 when he wrote the cousin’s husband “was killed outright, his body found blocks away. Betty was knocked into a coma, from which she never regained consciousness; she died two and a half years later in January of 1960.”

At the gravesite of the six children, one of his poems states “We are temporary,/ the same way clouds are /when they enter the sky, grow full / as our guts, unleash what they have / and then dissipate.”

Between poems he includes numerous pictures of the damage and destruction left in the aftermath of the tornado’s wake. Included is that picture of the young man carrying the dead child. Pictures of crushed cars are accompanied by one of a finned 1957 Dodge that helps my mind date the tragedy 68 years ago. Parsley’s poem “From There,” written through the eyes of his mother validates my seeing green in the clouds: “There I saw the air turn green / and thought / green? have I ever / before / seen the air / turn pea green?”

North Dakota’s tornado count of 80 in 2025 sets it in first place for the most in a year on record for our state. As for pictures, a couple videos of the Enderlin storm will be studied and looked at for a long time. The one video reported to be taken from a doorbell makes a person shudder as it captures what looks to be a thick-stemmed mushroom continuously lit up by lightning. A storm-chaser put himself and his vehicle in danger while following the storm. He’d made himself so vulnerable that the rear window of his SUV was knocked out.

I saw the damage brought by the tornado that struck near Walcott in 1955 that has been rated as an F4. Seeing is believing, and the sight bordered on the unbelievable. A piece carried by Prairie Public in succeeding years quoted one man’s memory. “The roar grew louder. The windmill blew apart. The barn and granary roofs lifted off; the granary tumbled across the yard like a cardboard box, and the barn collapsed in a spray of debris.”

Regarding the recent storm in Enderlin, one can’t wring any positive results from it except maybe to recognize the tremendous spirit of community that rose to aid victims. Perhaps, one day, someone will write a book called Enderlin 2025: An Elegy.