COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – Even though it was 53 years ago, most who lived through it still remember the shock and devastation of the Palm Sunday tornadoes that struck the Midwest April 11, 1965. In the Branch County area, the outbreak claimed 21 lives and caused several hundred injuries in the Coldwater Lake area.
Damage estimates were $32 million, with over 550 homes, 2 churches, a dance hall, and 100 cottages destroyed.
The unique intensity of the weather system in the Midwest that Palm Sunday was demonstrated locally early that evening as the unusual event began to take shape in the northwest corner of Steuben County, near the community of Orland, Indiana. What would become an F-4 tornado formed and quickly crossed the border into Michigan.
It struck the village of East Gilead squarely, and then continued on to destroy homes along the shore of Coldwater Lake, filling the water with debris. When it reached the opposite shore of the lake, a second tornado formed just five miles to the southwest near Kinderhook.
The two tornadoes took off together in the same direction along the same path, so that anybody hit by the first twister would get hit by the second one several minutes later. By the time the first tornado passed south of Hillsdale, its companion twister was about thirty minutes behind it. The duo roared across the countryside producing damage in a swath over a mile wide.
The weekend period of April 11-12, 1965 across the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin included 47 tornadoes for the third deadliest tornado outbreak on record with a total of 261 deaths.
