Tornado Damages North Dakota Farm Buildings

A tornado tore through a farmyard near the east central North Dakota town of Reynolds, but it spared the farmhouse and no one was hurt.

The twister touched down Tuesday afternoon, damaging several buildings and vehicles on the Steve Walen farm. Walen and his son, Brent, were returning from a wheat field at the time.

“It was raining so hard, it was so dark, we didn’t see nothing,” Steve Walen said. “My son was listening to the radio on the way home in his combine, I wasn’t listening to mine. He heard the report there was a tornado 31/2 miles southeast of Holmes. Then, when we got about three-quarters of a mile from home, we started seeing debris in the road and fields.

“It was something to see when you came in the yard,” He said.

The National Weather Service estimated the tornado as an EF2 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with peak winds of 125 mph.

The Walen farm is only a few miles from another farm struck by a tornado on June 17. Weather Service meteorologist Mark Ewens said there have been so many tornadoes in the region this summer, “We can’t count them.”

Storms Tuesday also brought heavy rain to the region, including a record for the date at the Grand Forks airport of 2.36 inches, eclipsing the record of 2.15 inches set in 1941.