By: Mary Steurer (North Dakota Monitor)
The weekend tornado that killed three people in rural Enderlin was the most deadly North Dakota has seen in nearly five decades.
While North Dakota sees an average of about 23 tornadoes a year, fatalities are rare, National Weather Service data indicates. The last tornado to claim three or more lives in the state was a July 4, 1978, storm that killed five people in Elgin. It was recorded as an F4.
Between the 1978 tornado and last weekend’s storm, North Dakota recorded four fatal tornadoes: an F2 in Renville County in 1997, an EF4 in Northwood in 2007, an EF3 in Ward County in 2010 and an EF2 in Watford City in 2018. Each of them resulted in one fatality.
The deadliest North Dakota tornado on record took place June 20, 1957, in Fargo, an F5 that claimed 10 lives.
While the National Weather Service has yet to officially classify this weekend’s tornadoes, preliminary results suggest the storm that hit Enderlin was an EF3, according to Jacob Spender, a meteorologist for the agency’s Grand Forks Office.
The people who died in the Enderlin tornado late Friday were identified as Michael Dehn, 73, Katherine Pfaff-Dehn, 73, and Marcario Lucio, 89, according to the Cass County Sheriff’s Office.
A separate tornado that appeared south of Valley City has been preliminarily classified as a EF2, Spender said.
The Grand Forks office said Monday it has yet to determine how many tornadoes in total there were.
“We sent a flurry of different teams out to kind of assess the different damage across the area,” Spender said.
Gov. Kelly Armstrong is expected to tour the damage this week.
