We were out for a Sunday drive

April 30, 2017 6:49 AM

50th Anniversary of the "Black Sunday" Tornado Outbreak [PDF, 86 pages] - Maps, documents and records, photographs, newspaper clippings, stories and recollections from Southern Minnesota in 1967.

There is a broken link in the PDF; the audio interviews are here.

posted by Wolfdog (7 comments total)

So, there's also the Palm Sunday event from 1965....

That was a scary event, at the time, I was a Jr. in HS, living just north of the major impact area in Michigan, we had major storms but no direct hits from the twisters. Two of my classmates (and very good friends), were driving home with their fathers from a golf tournament, their car was in the path of a tornado and was tossed, both died, as did one of the fathers. A couple of years ago there was some community reaction when the local school district wanted to remove the memorial Eagle statue (then our mascot) that was erected by my class in memory of Barry and Jack. The district relented and the Eagle still stands.

My wife's grandparents owned a cottage on Dragon Lake near Kinderhook (gruesome name, eh?) Michigan. The tornado picked up the cottage, dropped it in the lake. Her grandfather hired divers to go in to recover what they could. Last night, making mashed potatoes, I used the masher that was pulled out of the lake.

Thanks for the post...
posted by HuronBob at 7:21 AM on April 30, 2017 [12 favorites]

Info on the 1965 Palm Sunday Tornadoes, April 11th and 12th, 271 people were killed and 1,500 injured...
posted by HuronBob at 7:29 AM on April 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

Funny--I just finished rewatching A Serious Man (spoilers), which also takes place in southern Minnesota in 1967. I wonder if the tornado at the end of the film is meant to have any connection to these events.
posted by tschichold at 9:36 AM on April 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

tschichold – as soon as I read "tornado" and "Minnesota" and "1967" that is where my mind went as well.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:42 AM on April 30, 2017

According to Wikipedia, there are thirteen "Black Sunday"s, but this is not one of them! (Only the 1935 storm is mentioned for the U.S.) Hmmpf.
posted by Melismata at 10:54 AM on April 30, 2017

So, there's also the Palm Sunday event from 1965

This is an event that comes up every time a tornado even thinks about spawning here. My parents and grandparents talked about it often.

My old neighborhood had been flattened completely. At that time, it was thankfully mostly farm fields. My current neighborhood fared a bit better, but folks can still show you where bricks needed replacing or patching, or the remnants of trees that died after the storm had debarked them.

We have had some doozies in recent years, but none so bad as the Palm Sunday tornados.
posted by MissySedai at 8:56 PM on April 30, 2017

Thanks for this: I was born in MN a few years later, and despite my family having (and sharing!) a Weather Story for every occasion, I don't really hearing about these storms before.

(The Armistice Day Blizzard, OTOH, even though it pre-dated my parents' birth, was a favorite, and goodness knows there are a lot to choose from.)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:46 AM on May 1, 2017 [1 favorite]