WASECA — Bob Johnson, the recently retired fire chief in Waseca, remembers well the day dubbed Black Sunday.

“We were in front of our picture window watching the rain come down. Then the wind came up hard and water was blowing in sheets. Then it got kind of quiet and really dark. We heard the roar and headed to the basement,” Johnson said.

When he and his wife came back upstairs, they could see the night sky — their roof was gone. They were among the lucky ones.

Forty years ago this month, the Black Sunday tornadoes killed 13 people and injured 81. It remains among the 10 most deadliest outbreaks in state history.

Five of the dead were in Waseca, while others were in Alden, Albert Lea and Owatonna.

Weather officials who surveyed the damaged classified three of the tornadoes as F4s (F5 is the strongest). Two were F3, three F2 and one an F1.

The damage was $9 million, which would equal $54 million in today’s dollars.

Kids in the hayloft

Larry Draheim was a 15-year-old helping his dad do the milking on their farm four miles east of town when the tornado hit on April 30. His brother was celebrating a confirmation and about 25 kids were visiting.

“There were about a dozen kids playing in the hayloft. Luckily they were on the south end. The wind tore the roof off the barn and it landed to the north, so they weren’t hurt,” Draheim said.

His dad wasn’t as lucky.

“He heard it coming and told me to stand by a heavy post in the barn and he ran to the north end. He got sucked out the door.

“He said the barn roof blew over him. The wind carried him out, then slammed him back into the barn and he broke some ribs,” Draheim remembered.

A quick and odd storm

The storm was born in mid-afternoon as a low-pressure system hung over an area from Pierre, S.D., to LaCrosse, Wis. A warm front was to the south in Iowa. Wedged between the two was air that had warmed to 70 degrees with a dew point in the 60s.

That evening, as the warm front pushed north, the violent tornadoes developed.

The path of the tornadoes went south to northeast through Freeborn, Waseca and Steele counties and ended in Mower and Olmsted counties.

The National Weather Service had been posting tornado warnings all afternoon, but the ferocity of the storms took Waseca’s 6,100 residents by surprise.

With darkened skies, no one saw the funnels that moved toward Waseca after 6 p.m. and the town’s warning sirens were not sounded until after the storm had hit.

The twister sliced from south to north along the east edge of Waseca and many residents in other parts of town were unaware anything had happened.

Pete Madel Jr. lived just a few blocks to the west of where the tornado cut through. He and his wife were just leaving for the Twin Cities — driving on Highway 14 east — when Madel looked up.

“There was very dark skies, and as impossible as it was, I thought I saw a porch flying overhead.”

He spun the car around to check on their children and a baby sitter.

“At home everything was fine. The kids were still playing ball in the yard.” They watched the dark skies to the east for a while, but the weather calmed and they set back out on their trip to the Cities — this time taking Highway 13 to the north through the part of town that had no damage at all.

“We were all the way up by Jordan when we heard WCCO announcing there’d been this terrible tornado in Waseca. It’d already happened before we left and we didn’t know it,” Madel said.

The storm brought brief, heavy rain, a quick tornado and then everything was calm, Draheim said.

“It was odd because as soon as the tornado was gone, it didn’t rain a bit anymore. Even the water that had been puddled in the yard was like sucked out and everything was pretty dry and normal,” Draheim said.

About 20 homes in Waseca were destroyed and more than 50 damaged.

Hospital overrun

The Free Press reported that four men were playing cards at the White Castle Tavern on the north side of Clear Lake when the tornado cut through the building and a tree crashed through the roof and smashed the table they were playing at. None were injured.

Waseca Memorial Hospital was overrun with victims and people seeking word on friends and relatives. About 50 people were injured.

Doctors, nurses, X-ray machines and other medical supplies quickly poured in from around the area.

The bodies of John Riple, 87, and his wife Teresa, 67, were found near their shattered home on Southeast 11th Street.

Art Rux and his wife, Lydia, were in their car when the twister hit. The car was blown into Clear Lake and both died.

George Willock, the fifth Waseca victim, was decapitated and his body found near his home.

Then-Waseca County Sheriff Don Eustice set up security in the area, with 40 National Guard troops coming in to help and to prevent looting and limit gawkers.

Gov. Harold LeVander visited Waseca the day after the storm to survey damage.

In the following days, volunteers from 45 communities came to Waseca, working along area high school students and residents to clean up debris from the tornadoes.