National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office

Depicted here is the roughly 5 mile long Northwood tornado track, showing touchdown about 2mi WSW of town and dissipation about 2 mi ENE of town.  Times are closest minute estimates based on photograhic evidence and witness reports.  For any one point in town the nearly mile wide tornado, traveling at 25-30mph would have spent from one to two minutes. 

EF4 Rating Overview.

Ground evidence near the airport shows how the tornado track was widening at its approach into Northwood.  The scatter pattern of debris from the blown out hangar shows curving winds and long debris trajectories.  The tornado had actually crossed the Goose River about a mile WSW of the airport and left a 200 yard wide stretch of downed trees in its wake.  By the time it was hitting the airport the ground track was one third mile wide and growing wider.  At this point the tornado was still visible outside the increasingly heavy rain.  

The tornado reached an incredible width of eight tenths of a mile as it pushed through Northwood...to the ENE.  At this point it had multiple suction vortices embedded in the overall "wedge" shaped tornado.  The strongest of these vortices appears to have scoured the ground and left broad circulation patterns of debris in the overall damage and debris field.  Around this time the tornado likely became wrapped in heavy rain and would have been difficult to observe from a distance, though some pictures were taken!

Around 8 pm a funnel was observed just north of the intersection of ND HWYs 32 and 15 in southeast Nelson County.  This developed into the roughly 6 mile long and one third mile wide tornado track from about 6mi NNE  Aneta to 3 mi WNW Logan Center. Damage was rated at EF3.

Close to 10 pm, storm rotation again increased and produced this roughly 5 mile long and 300 yard wide tornado track... from about 7mi ENE Reynolds ND to 4mi WNW Eldred MN.  Damage was rated at EF2.

Tornado 3 miles west of Union ND, photos courtesy of Jeremy Johansen

Tornado 2 miles west of Hoople ND w/hail, photos courtesy of Walsh County

Tornado track and tree damage near Nash ND

Tornado track and structural damage near Florian MN.  This same storm likely produced a second brief touchdown near Newfolden later in the evening.

Videos (.mpg) of event Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 

Early motorist reports to news media had indicated that a tornado may have crossed I-29 at some point south of Grand Forks, shortly before 9:30 pm.  Later, reports were received of significant tree damage at farms and in shelter belts south of Merrifield which were linked to the motorist reports and confirmed via radar imagery.  An NWS damage assessment found that the damage was consistent with a 150 yard wide tornado tracking from roughly 2 miles west southwest of Merrifield to about 2 miles east of Merrifield, between 9:20 and 9:28 pm. 

This tornado likely dissipated as it entered extreme southern Grand Forks County, about a mile south of the King's Walk Golf Course, while still producing strong winds and hail across the Grand Forks area.  The tornado was rated as EF1, with peak winds to 90 mph.