The day the tornadoes came

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NWS photo of the Deephaven tornado during the May 6, 1965 outbreak.

I remember the green sky. I had never seen a sky quite that color. I knew something was very, very wrong.

Then the hail began to fall. Huge irregular chunks of ice the size of my fist. We put my older brother's football helmets on to protect our heads and collected them for the freezer. That was when the back door flew open and my mom came out screaming. "You kids get in the basement! Your father called and he said there's a tornado coming!"

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My dad worked at the Minneapolis Court House in 1965. He heard the police saying there were tornadoes headed for the Lake Minnetonka area. Boy was he right.

I remember looking out one of those small basement windows to the west and seeing the sky swirl. Huge hundred year old maple trees were twisting in the wind. Leaves and other debris were flying through the air. In about 5 minutes it all passed by. Luckily for us, we lived about a half a mile from the tornado's path of destruction. Our home was not damaged. But a half mile away, it was like a bomb went off.

The Cottagewood neighborhood was hit hard. Boats were on houses. Skis were in power lines. Roofs and walls were gone. Debris was everywhere. Amazingly, nobody was killed in that tornado. Residents on Carson's Bay in Lake Minnetonka reported seeing the tornado suck up so much water into the vortex as it crossed the bay that the water level dropped by feet. Some reported seeing fish flopping on the bottom of the temporarily dry lake.

The Chanhassen to Deephaven tornado was one of six that day in what still stands as the worst tornado outbreak in Twin Cities history. The Fridley tornado was the most deadly and perhaps the most remembered by Twin Cities residents.

We are lucky we have not had a repeat of that number and intensity of tornadoes since then in the Twin Cities. If it happened again today, the destruction and death toll would be much higher.

May 6th, 1965 is my first living memory. I can still visualise that day as clear as yesterday.

Do you remember the 1965 tornado outbreak?

PH