On the same day as the Waco disaster, a high-end F4 tornado struck the Texas city of San Angelo, causing catastrophic damage, killing 13 people, and injuring more than 150.

Two families on nearly parallel paths traveled more than 100 miles (160 km) each and killed a combined total of six people, mostly in Wisconsin.

Additionally, a relatively moderate tornado of F2 intensity caused significant loss of life in a shack in Minnesota, killing six people.

After two days of intense tornado activity, May 11, 1953, produced a rich, unstable air mass that moved northward over Texas from the Gulf of Mexico.

(lower 20s °C) As a dry line crossed the warm sector in the afternoon, a layer of cool surface temperatures left by the outflow boundaries locally enhanced low-level wind shear, acting as a mechanism to enable supercell and tornado formation.

The first tornado in the series, though officially unconfirmed, may have formed near Greene in Butler County, Iowa, causing significant destruction on a farmstead.

[15] The tornado then hit a few cars halfway between Dover and St. Charles,[15] one of which was carried 100 feet (30 m), injuring four occupants and killing the fifth, a child.

Across Fillmore, Olmsted, and Winona counties in Minnesota, over 24 farms received widespread, often severe damage, including the destruction of most buildings in some cases.

[13] Reports indicated that the storm crossed the Mississippi River into Wisconsin,[17] where tornado activity definitely resumed northeast of Cochrane and ended near Brownville.

[13] Between Cochrane and Brownsvulle, the tornado hit roughly 100 farms, at least 20 of which lost buildings, and produced high-end F3 damage to some homes.

The swath of damage between St. Charles and Whitewater State Park, Minnesota, across Olmsted and Winona counties, may have been from a separate thunderstorm, as Grazulis does not count it as part of the same tornado family.

Reports from local staff of the American Red Cross indicated that the tornado family destroyed or damaged 113 homes and affected 215 other structures.

[13] According to an old legend—attributed without corroboration to the Huaco, a local Native American tribe—tornadoes, or at least severe ones, could not touch down in Waco, a city located in a geological depression.

As it neared Waco, operators of weather radar at Texas A&M University detected a hook echo in association with the parent supercell.

The chaotic relief efforts eventually spurred greater coordination between civilians and local governments, leading to the development of civil defense.

[20] Notably, the Waco event was one of the first instances that proved the effectiveness of radar in tracking tornadogenesis; coincidentally, another such case occurred later in the same year.

[8] Researchers concluded that improved communications, coupled with the formation of radar coverage, could lead to accurate tornado warnings, thereby reducing loss of life in future storms.

This task proved especially important following the devastating loss of life at Waco and Worcester, along with the June 8 catastrophe at Flint, Michigan, in the same year.

[24] The state of Texas supported the implementation of 20 radar facilities, each with a 200-mile-wide (320 km) radius, that proved successful in reducing death tolls in later tornadoes.

After the disaster, some people in the local African-American community saw the tornado as divine retribution for the lynching of Jesse Washington over thirty years prior.