A violent tornado crossed southeastern South Dakota and inflicted severe destruction across rural Yankton and Turner counties before striking the small community of Davis. The National Weather Service classifies the tornado retrospectively as an estimated F4, a designation indicating extraordinary structural damage. The storm crossed a predominantly agricultural landscape in which farm families, livestock, crops, houses, barns, and small towns were directly exposed to severe weather. In Davis, the tornado destroyed nine homes, damaged fifty-two more, injured thirteen people, and killed one woman. Elsewhere along the South Dakota track, a man and his daughter were killed when the tornado swept away an entire farm as the family prepared to enter its storm cellar.
The tornado was part of a broader outbreak that affected portions of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa. Contemporary newspaper reports described destructive tornadoes moving northeastward across the region after a period of oppressive late-summer heat. Reports from September 14 and 15 documented destroyed farm buildings, dead livestock, damaged crops, disrupted communications, and communities struggling to determine the extent of the casualties. One contemporary account described the South Dakota tornado's track as extending through rural territory before reaching Davis, while another reported widespread agricultural destruction along its path. These initial reports varied in their casualty estimates, a common problem when damaged telephone and telegraph lines delayed the transmission of reliable information. Modern National Weather Service records provide the more conservative and standardized account of three known deaths associated with the Yankton-Turner County tornado.
Davis, located in Turner County, suffered the most concentrated urban destruction in South Dakota. Historical photographs preserved by the South Dakota Agricultural Heritage Museum show buildings with extensive structural failure, including a structure whose lower level was severely damaged and neighboring buildings with broken windows and roof damage. Such images provide physical documentation of the storm's intensity and supplement the numerical damage records preserved by meteorological agencies. The museum identifies the September 13 tornado as a major episode in the weather history of Turner County and preserves a period postcard of the destruction in its collection.
Local testimony also preserves the experience of Davis residents. The Daneville Heritage Museum holds photographs taken by Hans Jorgensen after the tornado and records the recollections of Henrietta “Ann” Bunger Farley, who was thirteen years old in 1928. Farley recalled that school had just been dismissed when she, classmates, and Superintendent Whealy observed the tornado from a second-floor school window. Farley and Eleanor Kuhlmeier ran toward her father's store. From there, Farley saw the approaching funnel and witnessed farm materials and a chicken shed being lifted into the air. She sheltered inside the store with her father, employee Anna Lodde, and a salesman for the Manchester Biscuit Company. After the tornado passed, Farley found extensive damage to her family home, including the loss of its roof, attic, and second-floor porch, along with broken windows, scattered bricks, glass, and dirt.
The tornado also disrupted one of Davis's principal instruments of community communication. Charles Hartsough, publisher of the Davis Eagle, reported in the newspaper's September 20 edition that the paper had suffered a complete loss and would operate under serious limitations for approximately two weeks. Despite the destruction, Hartsough stated that Davis would rebuild. His remarks document how quickly local residents moved from emergency survival to reconstruction. The continued publication of the Eagle, even under difficult circumstances, also demonstrates the importance of small-town newspapers in recording disasters, communicating local conditions, and preserving accounts that later became part of the historical record.
The disaster also illustrates the limitations of American tornado preparedness during the 1920s. Modern tornado forecasting did not exist in 1928. Meteorological historian Thomas Grazulis notes that communities affected by the September 13 regional outbreak lacked the severe-weather outlooks, tornado watches, Doppler radar, organized spotter networks, community sirens, weather radio, television alerts, and public warning systems familiar in later decades. Rural residents instead depended heavily upon direct observation, storm cellars, local knowledge, and warnings passed from person to person. The devastation in southeastern South Dakota therefore belongs to an era when powerful tornadoes could approach communities with little organized advance notice.
The September 13, 1928 tornado remains significant in South Dakota history because it united several defining features of early twentieth-century Great Plains life: agricultural vulnerability, small-town interdependence, limited weather forecasting, and community reconstruction after natural disaster. Its importance survives through government weather records, newspaper reporting, photographs, museum collections, and eyewitness testimony. Davis endured severe physical destruction, but the town survived and rebuilt. Those records make the tornado more than an isolated weather event. They preserve a detailed account of how one South Dakota community experienced and responded to one of the most destructive forces encountered on the northern Plains.
References / More Knowledge:
National Weather Service, Aberdeen, South Dakota. “This Day in Weather History: September 13th.” https://www.weather.gov/abr/This_Day_in_Weather_History_Sep_13
South Dakota State University Agricultural Heritage Museum. “Unpredictable South Dakota Weather.” March 11, 2026. https://www.sdstate.edu/south-dakota-agricultural-heritage-museum/south-dakota-agricultural-heritage-museumblog-4
O'Dell, Cheri. “Daneville Heritage Museum.” The New Era, September 7, 2023. https://fliphtml5.com/xbrzz/octz/The_New_Era_9.7.23/
Grazulis, Thomas. “Forecasting Then and Now: September 13, 1928, and Today.” NOVA, PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tornado/forecasting.html
Andrews, John. “The Day Davis Nearly Disappeared.” South Dakota Magazine, March 28, 2012. https://southdakotamagazine.com/2012/03/28/davis-tornado/
University of Oregon Libraries. Morning Register, Eugene, Oregon, September 14–15, 1928, Historic Oregon Newspapers. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn96088115/1928-09-14/ed-1/seq-1/