“I was talking to Comfrey Fire Chief Mark Warner on the police radio about it, when Mark said he thought a really big storm was brewing behind us, to the west,” Meyer said. “I looked ahead and saw straw and pieces of insulation and sheet metal falling to the ground in a circular motion. All of a sudden, I lost my radio connection with Mark.”

Meyer later learned that the storm picked up Warner’s vehicle and flipped it, causing the radio silence.

“I called the Brown County Sheriff’s Department and said they should send some people this way due to the storm,” Meyer said. “I headed to Comfrey, following the storm. I kept looking for a wall cloud but the tornado (estimated to be at least an F4) covered the whole horizon.”

Meyer said he couldn’t drive all the way into town due to downed power lines and poles in the road.

The new Comfrey school

“I remember a powerful smell of natural gas,” Meyer said. “The storm blew gas fittings off. The gas was spraying 20 to 30 feet in the air.”

Meyer walked downtown and saw vehicles flattened by large chunks of bricks. The roofs of most buildings in town were blown away. Some walls on the second floor of the school were gone. The fire department garage collapsed. Large grain bins on the east end of town were severely damaged. The water tower appeared unharmed.

“My (newspaper) office was upside down,” said Meyer, who also published the Comfrey Times.

He recounted how a resident, Marv Wall, described he storm.

“He said it was so black out he couldn’t see and said he thought this is how the world ends,” Meyer said. “Other people told me the wind was so strong they had to put their gas pedal to the floor to move.”

Then-mayor Linda Wallin pictured now

A number of people caught outdoors when the storm hit town held on to sign posts, lying flat on the ground.

A church steeple was overturned and driven upside down into the ground next to the church.

An electrical substation on the edge of town exploded knocking out electrical power and a civil defense system, Meyer said.

Linda Wallin, mayor of Comfrey at the time, said it was a blessing lots of people were at Memorial Hall celebrating a wedding anniversary when the storm hit. Most of the people went into the hall basement. When the storm was over, the building roof was gone.

Before long, area law enforcement agencies and utility crews rushed to town, clearing and controlling roads in and out of Comfrey. Residents were issued colored passes to get in and out of town.

Devastation after the tornado

Gov. Arne Carlson got to Comfrey two days after the storm. Sen. Paul Wellstone and other politicians were not far behind.

Today, after an estimated 75 percent of the town’s buildings were destroyed or damaged, Comfrey stands proudly in place. The damage was so great many wondered whether Comfrey could possibly recover, or should even try. But citizens who refused to consider the possibility of leaving rallied around their town, and the decision to rebuild the Comfrey Public School helped anchor the community. Two Lutheran congregations, Faith Lutheran and Salem Lutheran, who both lost churches, combined to build New Hope Lutheran Church. A new community center and post office were built. Businesses rebuilt as well and new homes replaced those that were damaged.

Another community hit hard by the tornado was St. Peter. The tornado ground for miles in Brown, Blue Earth and Nicollet Counties, destroying farm sites and buildings and strewing debris over farm fields. It passed just north of Hanska, and just south of Searles, Courtland and Nicollet before striking St. Peter head on.

Meyer wrote a detailed, four-page account with many photographs of the storm and community rally to rebuild in its wake.

The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a tornado watch from 2 to 8 p.m. Sunday, March 29, 1998, describing it as a “particularly dangerous situation.” The tornado that later hit Comfrey touched down 7 miles east of Avoca in southeast Murray County at 3:50 p.m. Cottonwood County got a tornado warning at the same time.

Devastation after the tornado

At 4 p.m., the NWS called Brown and Watonwan Counties, dispatching Comfrey and Darfur area spotters. A tornado warning was issued for the two counties at 4:21 p.m.

The storm, with actually four tornados counted at once at one point, was so big it was nearly invisible in a cloud of fog-like conditions. The tornado hit Comfrey at 4:28 p.m. and quickly left.

Not much later, help came in the form of armies of dump trucks, front-end loaders, pay loaders, police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, National Guard vehicles, electrical and phone company trucks and busloads of volunteers from around the state.

Meyer said the old Sanborn school was re-opened for Comfrey students to use until their new school project was done. In addition, the Morgan Fire Department loaned Comfrey a fire truck to use after the storm destroyed its fleet.

After 40 years in law enforcement in addition to newspaper operation, Meyers said he plans to retire at the end of May.

A number of city projects received insurance, federal and state funds including USDA Rural Development and Department of Trade and Economic Development (DTED) grants. Projects included a new $96,892.67 city maintenance building, $534,637.79 water treatment facility, $260,858 post office, $39,246 North Park concession stand, $1,678,935.29 city building/community center, $70,326 in wastewater treatment plant repairs, and a $3,499,532.66 street and utility reconstruction project.

The City of Comfrey received $480,058.85 in insurance payments, had $1,645,000 in DTED grants available and about $4.3 million allocated by FEMA/State of Minnesota for damages.

A revolving loan fund continues today at 4 percent interest to area businesses.