Mid-June 1992 tornado outbreak

Mid-June 1992 tornado outbreak

The Chandler, Lake Wilson tornado on June 16, 1992.
Type	Tornado outbreak
Duration	June 14–18, 1992
Tornadoes confirmed	170 confirmed (Record for a continuous outbreak in June)
Max rating1	F5 tornado
Duration of tornado outbreak2	~4 days
Damage	$242 million (1992 dollars)
Casualties	1 fatality, 110 injuries
Areas affected	Central and Midwestern United States, Florida
1Most severe tornado damage; see Fujita scale 2Time from first tornado to last tornado

¹Most severe tornado damage; see Fujita scale

The Mid-June 1992 tornado outbreak was one of the largest tornado outbreaks on record, affecting portions of the Central United States from June 14 to June 18, 1992. The outbreak began on June 14 when six tornadoes touched down in Colorado and Idaho. Fifty-eight tornadoes were reported across portions of the Great Plains on June 15, and 65 more were reported over much of the central U.S. on June 16. The 123 tornadoes that touched down on June 15–16 make that two-day span the 5th largest two-day tornado outbreak in U.S. history behind the 1974 Super Outbreak, the May 2004 tornado outbreak sequence, the April 14–16, 2011 tornado outbreak, and the 2011 Super Outbreak. Twenty-eight more tornadoes touched down on June 17, and 13 more touched down on June 18, giving this outbreak 170 confirmed tornadoes.

A major spring storm began developing in the western United States over the weekend of June 13–14, 1992. The storm ejected a minor upper air impulse across the Northern Plains on June 13, triggering severe weather across the extreme northwest corner of South Dakota. Golf ball sized hail and 10 inches of rain destroyed crops and killed over 500 sheep in Harding County, South Dakota. This event preceded the main storm which still was positioned over the western United States. As the storm moved to the east over the next several days, it caused 170 tornadoes in the central United States, including an F5 tornado in Chandler, Minnesota. The storm system finally began to weaken as it moved to the eastern United States on June 18.

On Tuesday, June 16, 1992, eastern South Dakota and southwest Minnesota were heavily impacted by the storm as it moved from the Rocky Mountain Region across the Upper Midwest. At least two dozen tornadoes were reported that day, with more than three times that many reports of large hail and strong winds, causing widespread swaths of damage to crops, buildings, and other personal property across much of eastern South Dakota and southwest Minnesota. The first tornado, spawned by a supercell thunderstorm, touched down in Charles Mix County, South Dakota about 1:00 pm. The last tornado was reported shortly before midnight that evening, ending an 11-hour period of intense severe weather across eastern South Dakota and southwest Minnesota. Until the record was broken in 2010, the 27 tornadoes that touched down in Minnesota on June 16 mark the largest single day tornado outbreak in Minnesota since accurate records started being kept in 1950.