Thunderstorm Wind — Blue Earth, Minnesota

2021-09-17 · near Mankato, Blue Earth, Minnesota

Event narrative

A tree branch fell onto a tent at the Land of Memories Park. A family was in the tent and a 4 year old girl was killed from injuries of the fallen tree branch.

Wider weather episode

A line of thunderstorms that originally developed across South Dakota Thursday evening, September 16th, quickly moved eastward over southern Minnesota after midnight. A series of surges along this line caused localized severe wind gusts that produced numerous downed trees and power lines across southern Minnesota. One of the storms produced an EF0 tornado south of Henderson in far southeast Sibley County.

As this line moved across the southern Metro of the Twin Cities, three tornadoes briefly spun-up leading to multiple power outages, plus major damage to Savage public works building and a large transformer for the city of Savage. In addition, the power outages caused local schools to close temporarily Friday morning. Another area of tornado damage occurred in Apple Valley and Burnsville. Most of this damage was due to trees falling on houses and vehicles.

A 64 mph wind gust was measured by the ASOS at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. At MSP Airport, with the strong winds and possibly brakes not being applied and/or improper chocking, two Sun Country aircraft slid into each other and into jetways H3 and H4, causing fairly significant damage.

Outside the tornadic activity, several sources of private and public weather sensors measured wind speeds of 40 to 55 mph across a wide swath of southern Minnesota. These winds coupled with heavy rainfall, caused numerous downed small trees and large branches across a 25 to 50 mile wide area from Redwood Falls, to St James, then northeast to New Ulm, Shakopee, St. Paul, and into parts of west central Wisconsin.

In addition, near Mankato, MN around 0730 UTC, a 4-year old girl was killed when a tree branch fell on the tent where she and her family were camping. There were approximately 80,000 people without power during the peak of the severity that moved through the metro area.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (44.1600, -94.0400)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 977865. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.