The National Weather Service surveyed damage from a severe storm that rocked Bemidji early Wednesday morning and determined that an isolated area of damage was caused by a tornado.
It’s believed that it an EF-1 tornado produced peak winds of 100 mph and was on the ground for about one minute. The tornado was approximately 200 yards wide.
Although it was a small, brief tornado, it left extensive damage in its path. A garage was lifted off its foundation, ash and pine trees were snapped and uprooted, shingles and roofs were damaged and projectiles shattered windows.
Of concern to many in Bemidji was that the sirens didn’t go off in advance of the storm.
“Little worried that there weren’t any sirens that we could hear past the high school on division,” said Summar Gehrke in a comment to the Facebook post, noting that her husband woke up because “it sounded like a train was coming.”
Beltrami County Emergency Management says the sirens didn’t go off because a tornado warning was never issued.
“Beltrami County lies about halfway between radar sites in Grand Forks (Mayville) and Duluth. Where weaker tornadoes develop in the lower levels of the storm, rotation is hard to detect due to the curvature of the Earth,” it said in a Facebook post.
by Joe Nelson (2018, July 5) Bring Me The News
