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

598K views · Apr 21, 2023 · People & Blogs

weatherbox studios

142K subscribers

Comments · 825

@weatherboxstudios · 3 years ago · pinned
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!
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@CeltonHenderson · 3 years ago
Never ceases to amaze me how ahead of his time Dr. Ted Fujita was, just incredible.
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@rschiwal · 3 years ago
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.
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@jobes8315 · 3 years ago
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.
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@StormGallade · 3 years ago
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.
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@cyd160 · 3 years ago
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.
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@dragonlover7196 · 3 years ago
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
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@13_cmi · 3 years ago
Those animations were incredible. You don’t even see things like that decades later.
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@YeahNah100 · 3 years ago
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.
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@NancyCollazo-rk7jh · 3 years ago
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!
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@maxdevos3201 · 3 years ago
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.
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@bambambam1807 · 3 years ago
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.
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