19531776 Club
A tornado a quarter-mile wide tears through Beecher; 116 are dead, half of them children
The funnel touched down at 8:30 p.m. in Mt. Morris Township and drove 18.6 miles through Genesee County, leaving 113 of its dead in one suburb alone.
The evening of June 8, 1953 was warm and electric — 78 degrees, dew point at 71, the northwest sky turning a dark "black-yellow-green" — before a tornado the width of nearly ten football fields bore down on the densely packed residential neighborhoods of Beecher, a Flint suburb. The F5 twister touched down at 8:30 p.m. in Mt. Morris Township and cut 18.6 miles through Genesee County, its funnel described by witnesses as resembling black smoke trailing smaller vortices. Of the 116 killed, 113 died in Beecher alone — including 54 children — making it the deadliest tornado in Michigan history and the 10th deadliest in the United States…
