North Dakota Twister & Derecho Kill, Toss Train Cars

Severe storms Friday night tore across North Dakota tossing a train off the tracks and doing unimaginable damage. Several tornadoes moved across the state and were closely followed by a derecho resulting in a loss of life as well.

Storms started off with a few supercells with tornadoes to the east of a line of severe storms which became a derecho as it produced hurricane-force wind gusts spreading over a large part of North Dakota. The tornadoes before dark were mostly in uninhabited areas and several storm chasers were able to stay out of harm's way while showing their path across the state.

The highest wind gust report I could find from the Storm Prediction Center was 101 mph from near Temvik in Emmons County. I also found that according to Fox Weather the storm winds "reached 80-90 mph for more than an hour in Jamestown."

As the storms drew closer to Fargo, the squall line was catching up to the tornadic supercells leading to some of the most damage. It was near Enderlin, North Dakota that a tornado caused a train to be thrown off the tracks, with one car thrown nearly 100 yards into a field.

It was that same tornado that would do extreme damage to some nearby homes resulting in the loss of 3 lives confirmed by the Cass County Sheriff's Office.

I'm sure more damage reports will continue to come in over the next few days. The National Weather Service in Bismarck will have a lot of work to do surveying all of the damage in their forecast area. Grand Forks will also be working to do surveys of the damage in their forecast area. It's entirely possible that these series of twisters will eventually be rated among the strongest to ever impact North Dakota, but we'll have to wait for National Weather Service survey teams to gather information before the exact strength can be determined.