Iron rails were torn from the ties and twisted like the smallest wires. Telegraph poles were torn up and wires twisted into curious masses.
Source:
The Saint Paul Daily Globe
Thursday Morning, April 15, 1886
Volume VIII, Number 105, Page 1
Farmers from the northwest part of the county tell almost incredible stories of finding remnants of buildings on their property, twenty miles distant from this city, and portions of organs and pianos have been picked up fifteen miles from the city and brought in as curiosities. Prairie, a mile northwest of the track of the cyclone, is full of pieces of plank driven a foot or more into the ground, which gives a limited idea of the terrible force with which they must have been driven by the wind.
The sides of many of the buildings are pierced with heavy splinters that tore a hole through thick walls only large enough to allow them to enter, and they protrude like huge pegs.
As showing the force of the wind, the sign board some feet in length that was formerly on the Manitoba depot was found to-day in a field fourteen miles from where it started. A metallic stamp used in the flour mill here was found in the same field.
A large chandelier which must have come from some public building was found near Mr. Schwartz’ house, half a mile west of the track of the storm. It is not known where the chandelier came from, but the fact proves that the storm struck somewhere before reaching St. Cloud.
Source:
The Saint Paul Daily Globe
Friday Morning, April 16, 1886
Volume VIII, Number 106, Page 1
The peculiar freaks of the wind on Wednesday night is forcibly illustrated in the following story, which comes from a man whose veracity cannot be doubted. On Broadway in Sauk Rapids stood a saloon, of which nothing now remains but the floor. A quarter of a mile distant in the line of the storm stands a dwelling with the front slightly torn. In the rear on the opposite side from the storm is a window which is broken, but not badly. On the morning following the cyclone, under a bed in the rear room from which the broken window looks out, were found three billiard balls that came from the saloon on Broadway, as they have its mark. They had been whirled through the rear window after having been carried a quarter of a mile.
Source:
The Saint Paul Daily Globe
Tuesday Morning, April 20, 1886
Volume VIII, Number 110, Page 1
Henry J. Rosenberger of St. Cloud found yesterday at Buckmantown, twenty-five miles north of Sauk Rapids, the cover of a new tin wash-boiler, carried by the cyclone from the hardware store of Berg Brothers of Sauk Rapids. A prayer book, the property of John Richter, residing near the St. Benedict hospital in St. Cloud, was found yesterday at Joseph Langer’s place, west of the Rich Prairie church. A letter book, belonging to W. S. Nieman of the Sauk Rapids Sentinel, was found in a good state of preservation two miles distant from Rice’s station.
Source:
The Saint Paul Daily Globe
Friday Morning, April 23, 1886
Volume VIII, Number 113, Page 5