Now we’re all used to a guy in front of a screen pointing to digital images of hurricanes, tornadoes, all with red, orange, and yellow indications of what the wind speeds will be like. For many of us, that’s as close as we will ever get to a real tornado, but not several decades ago television viewers were astounded by actual footage of one.
On this day July 18th, in 1986, a weather helicopter caught on tape a swirling tornado from the air. This was the first aerial footage of a tornado ever. The tornado spent 16 minutes wreaking havoc in Fridley, Minnesota, and viewers at home got see it in amazing detail.
KARE 11 TV, which was affiliated at that time with NBC, happened to be passing through the area while the tornado hit and immediately trained their cameras on it. People called hundreds of times to ask for the video, and for a while it made national television.