140 Years Later: Remembering Minnesota’s Deadliest Tornado Outbreak

(KNSI) – It’s been 140 years since the deadliest tornado outbreak in the state’s history tore through central Minnesota, killing dozens, leveling homes and injuring hundreds.

Stearns History Museum

Twin Cities National Weather Service Warning Coordination Meteorologist Todd Krause told KNSI News in the late afternoon hours of April 14th, 1886, the sky turned dark, and Mother Nature’s fury was unleashed. “Seventy-two, unfortunately, passed away, and over 200 were injured. I’m looking at a photograph of what it looked like afterward, and it was just absolutely nothing left, just decimated, trees just completely shorn off, just complete devastation.”

Twenty-four people died on the Stearns County side of the river in St. Cloud. After the tornado crossed the Mississippi, another 37 were killed in Sauk Rapids and the surrounding area, including 11 members of a wedding party roughly four miles south-southeast of Rice. The twister carved a roughly 25-mile path of destruction.

Krause explained the storm was unlike what most people picture when they think of a tornado. “One of the descriptions is that the tornado looked like a double spiral, and as I interpret that nowadays, that probably means it was a multiple vortex tornado where you have multiple individual vortices swirling around a common center.”

He described it as if a bunch of tornadoes were going around a merry-go-round.

Tornado historians rated the storm an estimated F4 based on written witness accounts and photos from the era.

Stearns History Museum

The 1886 tornado was not the only twister to touch down in central Minnesota that day. A second tornado struck northwestern Benton County near Little Rock and tracked toward Buckman, killing two more people. Two additional tornadoes were also reported elsewhere in the state.

Krause said while deadly tornadoes are still possible today, the combination of modern forecasting, warning systems, smartphones, sirens, and radio broadcasts has dramatically reduced the risk.
Despite those advances, devastating tornadoes still occur. The May 22nd, 2011, twister that struck Joplin, Missouri, killed 161 people and injured more than 1,000.

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