Tornado Kills Two, Injures One

A rare, strong tornado in Northeast Montana struck an isolated ranch about 11 miles northwest of Medicine Lake at approximately 7:15 p.m. Monday, killing two people and injuring another.

The buildings on the Smith Ranch on Rock Springs Road were demolished by the EF3 tornado. Three members of the family were in the main home when it hit. 

Barbara Smith, 71, was discovered in the basement of the home, taken to the hospital in Plentywood by ambulance, and later evacuated to Billings. Her grandson, Robert "Robby" Richardson, 10, was found dead in the basement. Her nephew, Steven D. Smith, 46, was found dead about 200 feet away.

A community-wide response of area fire and EMS agencies, county authorities including the Sheridan County Sheriff's Department, Disaster and Emergency Services, U.S. Border Patrol and many family members and neighbors mounted a hazardous and complex search operation during the night, according to a release from the Sheridan County commissioners.

"I've never seen anything like this before," Sheriff Pat Ulrickson said. "The destruction is just indescribable. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Smith family today."

On Tuesday, officials from the county, state DES and the National Weather Service in Glasgow conducted a damage assessment. There was significant property damage, including a two-story house and numerous outbuildings and ranch vehicles that were completely destroyed and a single-wide trailer that was blown away. There were also livestock and crop losses. Approximately 20 cows were killed or seriously injured.

Sheridan Electric Cooperative was repairing damage to approximately 6 miles of downed power poles and lines. They had restored power to all but a handful of customers by early morning.

The tornado also ripped the deck off a county bridge over Wolf Creek on Three Corner Road. The road is temporarily closed while the county road department constructs a bypass.

The strong winds were estimated at about 150 miles per hour and the tornado was rated an EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale by NWS meteorologists. 

Tanja Fransen, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Glasgow, stated that the tornado was one of the strongest and most deadly in Montana history.  Only three previous F3 tornadoes have been officially recorded:

June 7, 1946, in Roosevelt County, one fatality, one injured.

June 19, 1952, in Wibaux County, one fatality, two injured.

July 5, 1988, in Chouteau County, two injured.

This tornado is the deadliest in Montana since the June 10, 1923, F1 tornado in Mineral County, which resulted in two fatalities.

“This is a significant tornado for Montana," Fransen commented. "The length of the tornado path, as well as the maximum width of the tornado, is still being calculated, but it originated in Daniels County and observers noted that it went up and came down several times as it traveled southeast from Daniels through Sheridan County."

Meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Glasgow said they have been kept busy fielding telephone requests for information from all over the country. The storm was reported widely on national news and weather stations, and Jim Pedersen of The Weather Channel called The Glasgow Courier on Tuesday afternoon seeking tornado photos that The Courier provided via email.

Janet Bailey, The Courier's community correspondent from Opheim, noted that the storm went through north Valley County and into Daniels County with lots of high wind and some hail. She reported that there was a little golf ball-size hail, rain and high wind reported on the Richland Bench. 

Ed Hinton, who lives north of Four Buttes, told Bailey there was hail that started out marble-size, then turned to golf ball-size and finally baseball-size. He said it broke windows out of a car and probably damaged his crops.

Northeast Montana had already suffered one death caused by severe weather this summer. On June 16, a microburst during a thunderstorm near Froid lifted a modular home from its foundation and killed Romona Ryder, 59, and injured her husband, Pat.