It's tornado season. Here's a look at the most dangerous in South Dakota's history.
The National Weather Service has recorded 1,008 tornadoes in the United States since Jan 1. But South Dakota, which averages 19 per year, has yet to see one touch down.
June is the state's peak month in tornadic activity, when temperatures begin to rise throughout the northern plains. Deadly tornadoes aren't as common in South Dakota compared to other states in the Great Plains, but that doesn't mean it's spared.
Since 1950, when agencies began documenting tornado data regularly, South Dakota tornadoes have killed 18, injured 465 and caused over $300 million in property and crop damage.
Tornadoes weren't rated on a spectrum until 1971, when Tetsuya Fujita introduced the Fujita (F) scale to combine wind speed, damage, and length of path into one measurement. The National Weather Service, however, rated pre-1971 tornadoes based on records, such as a 1884 tornado outside of Howard, South Dakota thought to be one of the first ever photographed.
The Enhanced Fujita scale, which uses 28 damage indicators to analyze the severity of a tornado, replaced the Fujita scale in 2007.
Using that scale, combined with the injuries and fatalities sustained, and damage to structures, here's a list of the South Dakota's most dangerous tornadoes since 1950, placed in chronological order.
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May 8, 1965 — Tripp County
The strongest tornado ever recorded in South Dakota touched down in Tripp County less than a mile from the Nebraska border on May 8, 1965. The mile-wide F-5 tornado took 30 minutes to travel 30 miles through the rural area, obliterating seven farm homes and dozens more outbuildings, according to the National Weather Service.
The tornado didn’t kill anyone, except a lamb at the Erv Croston farm, but it did toss a car piloted by William Musilek on top of high line wires, then flung it towards his house, a May 13, 1965 story from the Winner Advocate reported. Musilek crawled from his car to his home and was later taken to the Gregory Hospital with broken ribs and a punctured lung.
The storm was part of a cold draft that produced 30 tornadoes, mostly in Nebraska, and dumped up to 36 inches of snow in the Black Hills.
May 21, 1962 - Mitchell, SD
Sixteen-year-old Jeanette Cain was serving coffee and food at Herbie’s Diner before an F-3 tornado ripped through west Mitchell at 8:37 p.m., according to the Mitchell Daily Republic.
She and another waitress took cover in the walk-in cooler, but everyone else — employees and customers waiting out the storm — refused. After the tornado passed, five were trapped under debris, and three were burned from the coffeemaker’s hot water, all rescued without serious injury.
The tornado caused $2.5 million in damage and injured 32 people in three minutes, including DeWayne Hohn, who died five years after sustaining head injuries. His two children, both under four years old, were flung a block away from their home but survived, according to the Mitchell Daily Republic.
July 31, 1966 — McPherson County
Four were killed and two were injured by an F-2 tornado that crossed the North Dakota border into South Dakota. The storm threw a car 500 feet from Highway 101, destroyed a trailer and caused $250,000 in damage, according to the National Weather Service.
July 23, 1973 - Pierre, SD
The strongest tornado ever recorded in Pierre touched down during a cold front on July 23, 1973. The F-3 twister went through a nine-block-long and two-block-wide sector on the western edge of town, tearing through one building, damaging two more and flipping a mobile home on its top, according to the Capital Journal.
The tornado injured 10 people and caused $165,000 in damage, although meteorologist Mike Fowle with the Aberdeen National Weather Service predicted the figure was between $1 million and $5 million.
Pierre resident Don Zeller witnessed the touchdown and gave his account.
“I did what any good South Dakotan would do. I went out to the porch and looked up at the sky,” he told the Capital Journal.
June 16, 1992 - Fort Thompson
An F-3 tornado destroyed four homes, 15 mobile homes, 19 campers, six grain bins and four high voltage towers at Fort Thompson in central South Dakota on June 16, 1992, the National Weather Service reported. The storm, accompanied by 11.5 inches of rain over a three-day period, injured eight people and left 55 homeless.
May 30, 1998 — Spencer, SD
The second deadliest tornado to strike South Dakota touched down in Spencer, 50 miles west of Sioux Falls, at 8:44 p.m. just over 21 years ago. The F-4 twister destroyed 150 of the town's 17 structures. Of the town's 320 people, 150 were injured and six were killed.
“It’s just like a bomb hit,” Tom Simmons, who lost his rented house, told the Argus Leader at the time. “I guess Mother Nature said it was time to end the lease.”
A power outage prevented warning sirens from alarming residents of the dust-cloaked tornado.
“They tell me the electricity was off. Look at this town. A siren wouldn’t have made a difference,” then-Gov. Bill Janklow said after surveying the destruction. “The fact is, we are lucky we didn’t have 200 killed in this devastation. That was a miracle.”
The tornado traveled 14 miles and left $18 million in damage, making it the most destructive in the history of South Dakota.
June 4, 1999 - Oglala, SD
An F-2 tornado traveled 15 miles through Oglala at 6:33 p.m., killing one, injuring 40 and damaging over 260 homes. The death was the third tornado fatality recorded in western South Dakota, according to the National Weather Service.
The tornado snapped telephone poles and flung mobile homes over 100 yards away. The cell also produced “grapefruit” size hail.
"I saw people stunned, in shock, like they were trying to make it seem like it was all right, but you could see in your eyes that it wasn't,'' Elgin Bad Heart Bull told the Argus Leader after the storm.
June 24, 2003 - Manchester, SD
The small town of Manchester was blown away by the strongest of 125 tornadoes on “Tornado Tuesday,” an outbreak in South Dakota on June 24, 2003. The state’s 67 touchdowns were the most in one day until an outbreak in Kansas on May 23, 2008.
The F-4 tornado was measured to be a half-mile wide, larger than the town itself. It injured three of the town’s six residents but left no fatalities. The system’s 100-millibar pressure drop was the largest ever recorded, according to Guinness World Records.
Loretta and Harold Yost were visiting a cousin when the tornado hit their farm. They returned to see their home and buildings leveled and their pickup truck hanging from a tree, according to the Argus Leader.
Vernon and Pat Ferguson emerged from the safety of their bathtub minutes after the tornado passed to find a kitchen sink in their kitchen. It wasn't theirs, they told the Argus Leader.
Manchester was never rebuilt, and a marker stands in the ghost town between Iroquois and De Smet off of Highway 14.
May 10, 2015 — Delmont, SD
An EF-2 tornado destroyed 44 houses and injured nine people in this small town of 220 90 miles southeast of Sioux Falls.
Resident Jeremy Daughtery didn’t know where his camper was tossed, but he did find a baby blue Chevrolet tailgate he used as a ramp to a trailer he and his family filled with intact belongings from their demolished home, according to the Argus Leader.
“We have four solid blocks of nothing,” Daughtery said about Delmont, which is still rebuilding.