June 4 in History

Its difficult to believe and accept that it was 49 years ago today, June 4, 1958, that as a six-year old I sat with my mom in a Volkswagen "bug" as the famous-in-Wisconsin Colfax Tornado roared by about 1/4 mile from us. I remember it vividly, first hearing the endless rumble of thunder and then seeing the funnel as it swirled through the cropland and emerged from behind the barn we were parked beside.

After the storm had passed, and being typically foolish people, we went out with hundreds of others to view the damage. Two scenes from that day are forever etched in my fading mind. First was the sight of the farm owned by George House, along Highway 25 just north of Menomonie, Wisconsin. All that remained of all the buildings was the foundation for his house, and the bathtub. Absolutely everything else was gone. The other vivid memory is of seeing a Holstein cow standing (but not for long) in someone's barn yard with a 2 x 4 sticking out of the side of her stomach near her hip.

The day after the tornado our first grade teacher made us paint or draw our feelings about the tornado that many of us experienced. I still have my watercolor picture painted that day. In it the sky is the tell tale green that usually comes before a tornado and next to the tornado is a second, smaller funnel that is poking out of the cloud. I don't remember the second funnel but I must have seen it or it wouldn't be in the painting.

This ancient picture shows some of the damage to Colfax Wisconsin wrought by the tornado that day.



I've been petrified and respectful of tornadoes ever since that day. And there have been more of them since then on or about June 4.

Like on June 4, 1978, when colleague Hal Kantrud and I were doing breeding bird censuses on plots of native prairie north of Great Falls, Montana and saw a tornado drop out of the sky and trundle across the landscape two miles south of us.

Then there was the evening of June 3, 1980 in Grand Island, Nebraska, and summarized here

At noon that day, I ate lunch in a Wende's on South Locust Street. I then left Grand Island and headed west to do breeding bird censuses on habitats in the western Platte River valley. At about 7:00 p.m. Mountain time that night I was looking at a Barn Owl nest in a road cut near Lewellen, Nebraska and remember looking back to the east and seeing a more than huge super cell storm. I thought to myself how lucky I was to not be where ever that storm was. Then this morning, June 4, 1980, while eating breakfast in a greasy spoon in Lewellen people were talking about "the tornado in Grand Island last night." It turned out there wasn't just one tornado but seven that dropped out of the sky as the huge super cell I was watching sat over Grand Island for hours and pummeled the city. The Wende's I'd eaten lunch in at noon yesterday was completely removed from the face of the earth by 8:00 that night.


Then there was June 4, 1981 in Jamestown North Dakota. My now former wife and I were, for whatever reason, giving our almost one year old daughter Dana a bath in the kitchen sink. We looked out our kitchen window to the southwest over the "Worlds Largest Buffalo" and saw a funnel cloud dangling from a cloud base. Eventually the storm passed over the city and the tornado touched down northeast of Jamestown Reservoir.

On June 4, 1992, while living in Grand Island Nebraska, I was with my softball team playing a game at Fonner Park on the south side of town. While standing in the outfield I could see a violent thunderstorm off to the southwest of the city. At about 9:45 p.m. the tornado warning sirens went off in Grand Island and we all dashed for cover. I drove home, parked my car in the garage and went to the basement where I turned on the radio and listened to reports of what was happening with the storm. The all-clear was given at 10:20 pm indicating that the funnel had passed. However at 10:30 the sirens went off again. This time the radio station was reporting that a different funnel had formed and was on the ground near Fonner Park. Living several blocks north of the park, I foolishly dashed outside and looked. There in a flash of lightning I could see the funnel. I later learned that it passed over and through the softball field we had been playing on 30 minutes earlier. During the 1992 tornado season in Grand Island I saw six tornadoes or funnels from my front yard. They became a nuisance after awhile.

For several obvious reasons I keep an eye pealed toward the southwest sky on June 4 each year.