EF2 tornado in Faribault County, Minnesota

A damage survey, plus photo and video evidence from chasers, showed this tornado developed just west of Kiester, moved north and struck the northwestern edge of Kiester, producing widespread tree damage and rated EF-1 at this point. It continued north as a multiple vortex tornado, doing EF-2 damage to a grove of trees. Farther north, several trees and grave stones were knocked over in a cemetery. It then turned and moved north-northeast before dissipating to the northeast of Kiester.

It should be noted that another tornado which developed south-southwest of Kiester (see entry for 1710 to 1716 CST) wrapped around this tornado and dissipated west of Kiester.

Several strong storms developed in west-central Minnesota during the mid afternoon hours of June 17th.

These storms quickly become severe and produced softball size hail northwest of Alexandria and a tornado near Leaf Valley that became the EF-4 that moved through Wadena, Minnesota.

By the late afternoon, numerous thunderstorms developed across southern Minnesota along the leading edge of extreme instability.

Numerous funnel cloud reports and a few brief tornado touchdowns were noted prior to 5 pm, but once the low level shear (0-1 km) increased significantly from 15 knots, to over 35 knots, strong tornadoes developed along the Iowa border.

These storms along the Iowa border produced a series of long-lived tornadoes near Albert Lea, Minnesota. Very large hail also accompanied some tornadoes along with flash flooding.