June 7-8 1984 Tornado Outbreak

[John Paulson]

On the night of June 7 and early morning hours of June 8 1984 a major Tornado Outbreak hit the Upper Midwest. The most famous of the Tornadoes was the F5 that hit the small town of Barnaveld WI. However there were Tornadoes in other Upper Midwest States. And on a personal note my small hometown in Minnesota was affected. We were not directly hit by a Tornado but the city of Albert Lea about 14 miles away was hit by an F3 Tornado on June 7. The Tornado hit and severely damaged the Ambulance Service for Albert Lea. As a result our small home town Ambulance Service went down to Albert Lea and took over.(WE had the only other Ambulane Service in Freeborn County MN at the time). Tornado outbreak of June 7–8, 1984 - Wikipedia

 

[Jeff Wright]

Black Earth…named after the soil?

 

[Andy Wehrle]

This is one of the top events I would love to be able to go back and watch evolve on present-day NEXRAD (along with the 1974 Super Outbreak, the 1965 Palm Sunday outbreak and the 1925 Tri-State tornado). It's very unusual for (a) supercell thunderstorm(s) that fire and begin producing a high-end tornado family in Iowa to continue doing the same in Wisconsin, especially late into the night. Storms are nearly always congealing into an MCS or dissipating due to increasing inhibition/boundary layer decoupling as they cross the Mississippi River after nightfall.

This year on 3/31 was one of the few outbreaks I recall in my lifetime to heavily impact the entire region of eastern Iowa, northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, although it evolved a lot differently with the discrete tornadic supercells primarily in Iowa/a couple in IL and multiple rounds of tornadic QLCS activity affecting the entire area, and no tornado in Wisconsin was rated higher than EF1.