Weekend tornadoes skipped MN State Fair, but the storm still crashed the fun

Jared Kaufman, Pioneer Press
·4 min read

Several tornadoes touched down during last Saturday’s severe weather, and while the Minnesota State Fair in Falcon Heights was spared from the worst of it, fairgoers — including some on the 15-story Great Big Wheel — were still soaked by torrential rains on the first Saturday evening of the Great Minnesota Get-Together.

In southern Ramsey County, according to the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service, a tornado ran for 3.4 miles: First southeast of Interstate 94, tracking along U.S. 10/U.S. 61, then into the East Side of St. Paul. There, it passed near Harding High School before ending near Goodrich Golf Course in Maplewood. The relatively weak tornado was classified as EF0, the lowest rating on the Enhanced Fujita intensity scale, with gusts in the 65 to 85 mph range.

Meanwhile, other small tornadoes were spotted in Dakota County. In Burnsville, a tornado broke trees along the south side of Crystal Lake, near Lac Lavon Park up to Crystal Beach. In Apple Valley, weather officials reported that several trees had been uprooted and caused structural damage around Cedar Avenue and 127th Street, near the Minnesota Zoo. A third tornado in the county touched down in Eagan, near Duckwood Drive and Lexington Avenue, and a final one caused damage to “numerous large trees” around Thompson Avenue and U.S. 52 in West St. Paul.

Thousands were left without power on Saturday night near the tornadoes in Ramsey and Dakota counties. Power outages continued until Monday for about 700 Xcel Energy customers, but according to the company’s electric outage map, just about all the power failures had been restored by midday Tuesday.

When the storm hit the State Fair, a collective buzzing noise sounded as a National Weather Service alert was pushed to fairgoers’ cellphones.

“It was sort of eerie,” wrote fairgoer Alyssa Balwanz in an email to the Pioneer Press.

Balwanz and a friend decided to embrace the moment.

“We danced in the rain,” Balwanz wrote.

At the Grandstand stage, the band Portugal. The Man’s headlining act was canceled, and many of the roughly 2,700 people in attendance evacuated into the building. Some vendors were already closing for the night, but others stayed open for the flood of fairgoers.

“We ourselves spent over $100 on vendors there that we wouldn’t have if the show had continued,” reader Steve Anderson said via email. “At the entrance to the grandstand, right by the fresh corn vendor, the water had pooled and was at least knee deep. There were a few people that kept walking through it, even though the water was brown and trash cans had fallen over into the giant puddle, so it was pretty gross.”

Another reader was on the Ferris wheel when the rainstorm hit.

“The phones showed us weather alerts just seconds before we got on, so we thought we would have time,” reader Brook D. Carl wrote in an email. “We were wrong.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, a State Fair spokesperson was looking into a Pioneer Press inquiry about the protocol for closing down rides and attractions like the 156-foot-tall Great Big Wheel in specific situations like Saturday’s storms. However, at 8:55 p.m. Saturday, Fair officials announced that rides at the Mighty Midway, Kidway and Adventure Park had closed until further notice, and they advised folks to seek shelter. The Great Big Wheel, located on the north end of the Fairgrounds near Little Farm Hands, is not part of either the Midway or Kidway.

“Maybe they should shut it down now,” said a Ferris wheel rider in a video Carl sent, as rain poured around the enclosed car. “How come they’re not watching the weather?”

“You would think,” replied another passenger, as others laughed in the kind of excited terror you might expect on a roller coaster.

The State Fair is no stranger to severe weather over its 137-year history at the current Fairgrounds site, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ climate journal. In 2007, about two weeks before the Fair opened, a thunderstorm brought nearly 70-mph winds to the Fairgrounds and tore off parts of the Grandstand roof. Back in 1989, golf ball-sized hail fell onto fairgoers one afternoon, and in the evening of Aug. 30, 1977, about four inches of rain fell in three hours and flooded much of the Fairgrounds.

Temperatures have also swung over the years. In 2013, a record six days of the Fair saw temps above 90 degrees, but the Fair’s hottest day ever — 104 degrees, in 1931 — hasn’t been surpassed for over nine decades. Twenty years earlier, though, on one day in 1911, the thermometer maxed out at just 52 degrees. Recent Fairs have been more temperate, with no 90-plus temps recorded from 2014 to 2019, per the DNR, and with forecasts for most of the 2022 Fair sitting comfortably in the 70s and 80s.

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