2036 Upper Midwest Tornado Sequence

Note \ This article is still being produced.

2036 Upper Midwest Tornado Sequence
On May 6, 2036, 128 tornadoes struck the US states of Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Nebraska.

A sizable number of the tornadoes were later determined to be of EF5/F5 strength after having passed through numerous fairly large cities. The devastation to the impacted cities makes this the worst tornado sequence ever recorded on all levels: cost, life span, size, strength, and death toll.

Of all the cities destroyed by the tornadic events, Minneapolis was the largest and most heavily damaged. Casualties in Minnesota alone exceeded 70-thousand.

President Yang Zhao-Long, after visiting the ruined area on May 8 with her sister, stated that she had "never seen such complete destruction." Minnesota Governor Jessica Haypin later said, "This is unprecedented on a level I don't think anybody's ever seen."

Minnesota \
Bemidji \

The first tornado of the sequence began as a very weak drill-bit tornado, 9 miles WSW of the city of Bemidji at 426am Central Daylight Time. The tornado rapidly strengthened and destroyed a pine forest in front of the city. It grew to ¾ of a mile wide and was moving at only 3 miles per hour. Two miles outside of Bemidji, still tracking to the east-northeast, the tornado swept away numerous trees and wheat fields, along with three barns.

Due to the tornado's slow forward speed, authorities were able to evacuate Bemidji in its entirety, resulting in no fatalities or injuries. 40 minutes after the city had been cleared, the tornado hit Bemidji with full force, blowing all objects away in a two-mile-wide radius of its visible condensation funnel. Essentially swallowing the city whole, the tornado moved slowly, as if to ensure that nothing be left standing.

The tornado ravaged Bemidji for an hour before dissipating over Lake Bemidji at 832am CDT. Indeed, after the tornado vanished, no complete piece of the city remained, rending all 18-thousand of its residents homeless.

A farmer with a powerful camcorder witnessed the destruction of the city from her car about four miles to the west. She later said, "I didn't even know there was a city right there until I had been filming for ten minutes, because the monster seemed to just be inhaling buildings."

Albertapolis Freeway Tornado (Albert Lea) \
The outbreak's first killer tornado formed rapidly in extreme northern Iowa at around 9am CDT, and crossed the state line into Minnesota as a wedge traveling nearly 40 miles per hour. The tornado was recorded at nearly 3 miles wide by a hellachopper based in Albert Lea. The pilots of the chopper realized the tornado had the city in its sights, and issued the world's first-ever Vigilante Tornado Warning.

Soon afterward, while the chopper was still tailgating the tornado as it approached Interstate 90 (Amelia Earhart Memerial Freeway), the tornado's curculation caught the chopper in mid-air, sending it crashing in a wheat field adjacent to the freeway, killing all four people on board.

In Alberta Lea, as news broadcasts of the tornado in Bemidji came to light, mixed with the new Vigilante Tornado Warning, citizens panicked and tried to evacuate their city as well. However, this tornado, at nearly 3 miles wide and traveling at 85 miles per hour, was approaching from the west-southwest, leaving only one direction for the evacuees to go: east, on the Earhart Freeway. Traffic soon jammed all six lanes of the interstate with cars, creating the longest traffic jam in American history, stretching from 8 miles east of Albert Lea to the Minnesota/South-Dakota state line.

At 930am, the tornado crossed the freeway just southwest of the city. The tornado's winds extended far beyond the visible funnel, causing destruction to structures before the tornado itself even arrived, catching the city off guard. The cars on the freeway were thrown for six miles, with tractor-trailers flying for just over four miles and landing on the ground in unrecognizable heaps. Eight-thousand vehicles were flung off the interstate as the tornado moved across the freeway. The freeway itself experienced severe structural damage, with entire overpasses in downtown Albert Lea getting completely dismantled.

The tornado acted like a chainsaw as it progressed through Albert Lea, as the debris it was carrying further pulverized all standing structures. Both hospitals in the city were completely razed before they could be evacuated, resulting in nearly 5-thousand deaths from the hospitals alone. A powerline distribution plant northeast of the city along the Alertapolis Freeway took a direct hit. The plant serves the southern counties of Minnesota of three north Iowa counties, and with the plant's destruction came a region-wide power failure, the fourth largest in Minnesota history.

This tornado was later dubbed The Albertapolis Freeway Tornado, after having followed the Albertapolis Freeway all the way to Minneapolis.