• MANCHESTER, S.D. (AP) -- One day after Loretta Yost vividly wrote about the wild phlox blooms in her small South Dakota prairie village of Manchester, a tornado ripped through the once-bustling railroad community, destroying her family's farm and everything around it.
• The twister that hit Manchester on June 24, 2003, was the worst of 67 tornadoes that developed in eastern South Dakota on what became known across the state as "Tornado Tuesday." No one was killed, but three of the town's six residents at the time were injured.
• Although the town was small then, it was booming in the 1800s, and decades later, Manchester gained fame for hosting a centennial event that attracted some 150,000 people, including celebrities. The small town is the birthplace of pioneer painter Harvey Dunn and sits just 8 miles west of De Smet, the childhood home of "Little House" novelist Laura Ingalls Wilder.
• "The beautiful purple dazzles the eyes," Yost wrote in a June 23, 2003, short story. "You see the blossoms under ancient trees, around the shadowed remains of weathered buildings, near the street as it passes the old town pump, and along the fence rows."
• The next evening, the F4 tornado packing winds between 207 mph and 260 mph cut a 25-mile long swath through the Kingsbury County community just off U.S. Highway 14.
• The Yosts were visiting a cousin when the storm hit, but they returned to find their house, barn, shop, chicken house and two grain bins gone. Harold Yost's Chevrolet pickup was dangling against a tree; its transmission and engine sat on the ground.
• "I saw it and it was just extremely hard to believe that it actually hit our place and did away with it," Yost recalled. "It was too unreal."
• Manchester in its heyday boasted a town hall, grocery stores, a lumber yard, two

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