I swear this is the most trippy tornado caught on camera. The suction and structure are so out of this world. And amazingly filmed for 1986; truly a gem of the storm spotting pop culture.
Beautiful. Tornadoes are definitely best viewed from the air. I think there's more of a sense of their power when you can see them whipping around like that.
Impressive even by todays' standards. Thank you for posting, growing up in MN I saw this when I was a little kid. Scary stuff for a 7 year old, but it drove my curiosity wild. I chase after nasty storms today. With a healthy respect, of course.
That's just incredible. You can see the intensity of the inflow especially at 3:58 or so... debris and condensation just blasting in (mostly at the right) toward the funnel... and the intensity of the updraft, too. There are places where almost all of the motion appears to be vertical (4:28 on). Wow.
I don't know if anyone will see this. My teacher from 6th grade told us her story of living through this. She said it sounded like a train was above her. Her home was destroyed of course and she says she will never forget that day as it could've gone either way.
I was on my way home from work that day from DT Mpls to Wayzata. It was VERY hot and sunny, but I noticed ONE dark cloud to the north and didn't think much of it. When I got to my dad's veterinary hospital, his upstairs tenant yelled at me to come upstairs and watch the live news...and that is what I saw! On live TV! Little did I know my brother who was a policeman at the time was following it and snapping pics like crazy, one of which was published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I think they rated it as an F2-3, but it was hard to tell because it mostly cruised (or loitered) in the woods. Those "branches" you see flying way up in the air were entire, large trees!
This particular tornado has always stuck in my mind for some reason after seeing it on some tv show in the early to mid 90s. It was a blessing that the Fridley-Brooklyn Park tornado only hit mainly forest and did not kill anyone in a densely populated area. I am now obsessed with tornadoes ever since a tornado outbreak struck Pennsylvania in 1985.
I remember this day (7/18/86) like it was yesterday. Very hot. Wiped out much of Springbrook Nature Center. The building it stopped short of at the end was "Georges' In Fridley" which is now a Broadway Pizza restaurant.
Even thats an old one, that tornado scientifically is important because it showed for the first time a single almost stationary suction vortex and above that you got the vortex breakdown bubble area with its helical vorticies. long time ago I made a tornado like that.
Love the Vortex breakdown area near the ground with the helical vortex corckscrewing around the breakdown bubble area as some tornado scientists call it.
When you look at the speed and the size of that thing compared to the trees it's easy to see how these things rip houses apart and destroy lives, those look like full grown trees just ripped out of the ground and thrown thousands of feet up. Pretty impressive.
my dad was up to that date watched only Ch 5. but when they acted that the tornado was only a lil rain. and their big story was some dude from Russia defecting. and Ch 11 having this live on the air. dad changed his station of choice to Ch 11. wonder how many others did too after that night.
amazing...seeing a wind storm throw 40 or 50 foot pine trees weighing in at more than two tons three or four thousand feet into the air...incredible stuff
