On April 10th and 11th 1979 a confirmed 59 tornadoes ripped through Northern Texas, Oklahoma and several nearby states. The official name for this mass outbreak of killer storms was The Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak but for all those who survived it was called Terrible Tuesday.
My family moved from Whittier, California to the farming community of Vernon, Texas in the summer of 1974. We were all to familiar with earthquakes, but had no idea of the sheer terror a tornado could inflict at a moments notice.
If you live, or have lived, in tornado country you understand that you don't even have to have a tornado form to get an uneasy feeling that comes when all the atmospheric conditions align to produce the kind of storm that could produce one. The pressure drops and the hot air turns cold. The hairs on your arms and the back of your neck stand up. You feel like your on another world and something is terribly wrong. Sometimes the skies turn all kinds of odd colors like orange, green, or black. Not just a regular black. A black so dark it looks the end of the world.
I now find myself back in tornado country here in central Louisiana. When tornado producing storms form I can go outside and I can feel them. It's kind of a strange experience. I guess once you know it, you always know it.
Last Spring a medium sized tornado formed just west of us and travel to the northeast some five miles from town. The storm did some rather extensive damage to LSUA (Louisiana State University Alexandria).
I knew it was coming.
Focusing again on my days in Vernon during the 1970s I remember the time that I saw a tornado form just north of town. My family was visiting some friends on a Sunday afternoon, I believe it was in 1978, a year before the events of Terrible Tuesday. The family we were visiting had a daughter that was in the grade below me and they also had a trampoline. We were having a great time as always jumping and flipping in the air as children do. There were some bad storms forming and there began to be sounds of thunder in the distance. This, of course, had little effect on us because there were always thunderstorms in northern Texas. I was still playing and having fun when I suddenly realized that my companion had stopped and was standing as stiff as a statue. Her eyes laser focused on something. I stopped and turned to see what she was fixated on.
I will never forget what I saw. A tornado was just coming down out of the clouds. It wasn't a large one, in fact to was rather skinny and it's tail made a curlicue like a pigs tail. It seemed like we stood there forever staring at it, but in actuality it couldn't have been more than a few seconds before we both came to and ran to the house to tell our parents.
We all loaded into our cars and made a quick trip back to our house where our family had an underground shelter. By the time we arrived home the tornado had dissipated.
Another thing that I will never forget from that day was the sight of two small clouds swirling around each other. The clouds weren't very high, just above the power lines and it was like they were dancing with each other.
I've never seen anything like that since.
Luckily for my immediate family we moved out of Vernon in the summer of 1978, relocating to Albuquerque, New Mexico, so we missed the horrible events of Terrible Tuesday. My aunt and uncle, however, remained in town and had some incredible stories to tell us when they came to visit in the summer of 1979.
My uncle J.G. Hulsey told the story of the owner of the Canton Cafe in Vernon. Anyone from Vernon knows that the Canton Cafe was a great Chinese food restaurant back in the day. Anyway, according to my uncle the owner was getting ready to leave just at the moment the tornado was raging through town. He opened the door only to see the storm heading straight towards him, In the moments that he witnessed the tornado someone in the parking lot was picked up off the ground. The tornado was so violent that it ripped the man's arm off. He slammed the door and dove behind the bar. The storm destroyed the building around him. Luckily he managed to survive.
My aunt and uncle also brought a copy of the Vernon Daily Record with them. I remember going through the pages and looking at the photographs of the damage with horror. The town looked like it had been reduced to foundations and matchsticks.
I went to third grade in the part of town that was destroyed. I had schoolmates that lived in the area. I always wondered if they were okay or not?
Though I lived a state away, the events of that day had an effect on me,
History:
The 1979 Red River Valley tornado outbreak was a tornado event that occurred on April 10, 1979, near the Red River Valley. It is noted for the F4 tornado that hit Wichita Falls, Texas, and is commonly referred to as "Terrible Tuesday" by many meteorologists. Additional tornadoes were reported across the Southern Plains as well as in the Mississippi River Valley on April 10–11, 1979.
A deepening low pressure system formed in Colorado as a warm front lifted north pulling warm, moist, unstable air. There was strong upper level dynamics all coming together to produce strong tornado-producing supercells. In the early afternoon hours, three supercell thunderstorms formed. They moved northeastward, and as a trio spawned families of tornadoes. These supercells caused the most damaging tornadoes of the outbreak.
The first tornado formed near Crowell, Texas, at around 3:05 p.m. About 35 minutes later, the first killer one of the outbreak ripped through Vernon and killed 11 people. Then the supercell spawned one that killed three people in Lawton, Oklahoma. The second supercell spawned one that moved 64 miles (103 km).
The third supercell was the one that formed the Seymour and Wichita Falls tornadoes as part of a three-member tornado family. The first tornado formed near Seymour at around 4:53 pm. The storm spawned a second tornado that moved through the south and east sides of Wichita Falls at around 6:00 pm. The third member of the family formed near Waurika, Oklahoma, at around 8:00 p.m.
Vernon resident Jessie Appleby talked about his experience on Terrible Tuesday in an article for the Vernon Record:
Appleby was working at Cardinal Equipment in east Vernon. He and his coworkers were finishing up a break at the Canton Café around 3:30 p.m.“We always took our break from 3 to 3:30 and went over to the Canton. When it was over, I went to the bathroom. If I hadn’t had to go to the bathroom their might of been a lot of people dead,” Appleby said.
“The west overhead door was open and it was bright daylight. I wasn’t in there two minutes and when I came out it was black. I looked out and there was a black wall cloud.
“Oh my gosh, there’s a tornado. I immediately ran to the back of the shop and hollered ‘There’s fixing to be a tornado.’ I said, ‘Everybody get to the bar ditch.’ No one gave me any flak or thought I was kidding we just ran.
“Just at that time a guy pulling into Vernon came running up, he said ‘I’ve got to use your phone.’ I said, ‘You don’t have time.’ And kept running. He ran inside. That’s where they found him, right where the phone used to be. The building was completely gone.”
“I was in the middle of the pack and things were flying everywhere when we ran outside. My glasses just lifted off my face (I never found them). The truck driver — Tony Robinson was the last one out. The wind picked him up at the doorway and threw him. He hit face first into the guardrail. It tore him up real bad.
Some of those employees with him were Nathan Christian and secretary Charlene Galloher. He said four people died near where he was at, but none of the employees. He said combines at the business were rolled up into little balls, one was split in half. Wheat straws were driven through cast iron wheels.
He said there had been a Coke box machine with 10 cases of bottled coke. When the storm passed the Coke box was gone but the cases were still there. Except each bottle was half filled with mud, while the caps were still on them.
“There are so many things you can’t believe could happen,” he said.
Appleby and the employees ran for cover as the tornado destroyed the buildings behind them.
“We dove over the guardrail and rolled down the hill into the bar ditch and dug into the grass to hold on.
“It sucked me up.
“Time looked like it stood still – everything was moving in slow motion. I guess I was only conscious for about 20 or 30 seconds but it seemed like a long time though.
“While up there it was clear as it could be. I saw a cow, a pig and a swing seat just rotating around with me. Then something hit me in the back of the head and I blacked out.
“It dropped me near Donna Goodrum’s back lot is now. I lay there unconscious till I felt something falling on my face. It felt like snow cone ice hitting me in the face.
"Of course, almost 40 years ago you didn't have the weather technology or expertise that we have now," Lynn Walker, former KAUZ news director and lead anchor, said. "So we weren't going to get as specific a warning or early a warning as we would nowadays." Walker would later serve as city editor for the newspaper.
By the afternoon, the Wichita Falls area was put into a tornado watch. To the west of Wichita Falls was a large super-cell thunderstorm and behind it was a smaller super-cell thunderstorm. The larger storm stuck Vernon where a F4 tornado, the second-highest rating possible, touched down and caused 11 deaths.
That storm would move north of the Red River and head to Lawton, Okla., where three more people would be killed. A smaller storm began to move toward Wichita Falls. When it was over Seymour, the storm dropped down an F2 tornado as it continued tracking towards Wichita Falls.
A third super-cell thunderstorm started near Harrold and would travel northeast to Grandfield, Okla., and end south of Marlow. That storm would produced a tornado that was on the ground for 64 miles.
Lee Anderson was on the regional staff at the Times Record News during Terrible Tuesday.
"For me it was a typical work day," Anderson said. "For some reason, I left the office at maybe 4 o'clock that afternoon."
Anderson never thought that a tornado would be a possibility that day. Not severe weather or even rain. At home he decided to take a nap, and as he was dozing, famed farm editor Joe Brown called him to ask if he wanted to go to a fatality on U.S. 287 between Harrold and Oklaunion, which is east of Vernon.
"We see this 18-wheeler and a car on the side of 287 headed in the direction of Vernon. They both pulled over to the side of the road because they could see a tornado coming," Anderson said.
The man and woman from the car had hid underneath the 18-wheeler, and the storm picked it up and slammed it back down.
"Unfortunately this little lady was crushed by the wheels. She was deceased when I got there," Anderson said.
"He said Vernon's just been devastated by a tornado." Anderson said, "Before we got to Vernon I could tell that the city had been hit real hard. Particularly the south and east sides of town."
Once in Vernon, the patrolman let Anderson out. With no other way to get around he started walking, talking with survivors and taking photographs. He went to the National Guard Armory to interview law enforcement, medical personnel reporters who worked in Vernon and other officials.
Eventually he headed to the funeral home after meeting back up with Joe Brown. It was there that he tried to call the newspaper in Wichita Falls.
"I kept calling and trying to get a hold of the newspaper to to let them know what had happened in Vernon because in my mind at that time I thought I had the biggest story imaginable," Anderson said. "I finally got through to the editor of the paper. His name was Don James and he said, 'Lee, Wichita Falls had been hit. It's been hit hard. Your wife and kids are OK.'"
2. The majority of those tornadoes were spawned by just 3 individual supercell thunderstorms.
3. The first and northern most supercell produced a tornado around 3:05 pm south of Crowell, TX. The same storm produced another tornado around 3:40 PM that destroyed the southeastern portion of Vernon, TX causing 10 deaths. The storm then crossed the Red River to produce three more tornadoes. It produced a 5th and final tornado in Lawton, OK, killing 3.
4. The Vernon, TX tornado was rated F-4 on the Fujita Tornado Intensity Scale. The Lawton, OK tornado was rated an F-3.
5. The second supercell thunderstorm produced a violent tornado that stayed on the ground for 64 miles. It started near Harrold, TX then hit portions of Grandfield, OK and continued northeast and dissipated southwest of Marlow, OK.
6. The third, southern most supercell, produced a tornado near Seymour, TX. As the storm moved northeastward, it produced another tornado that would eventually track through Wichita Falls.
7. The Wichita Falls tornado caused over $400 million in damage, making it the most expensive US tornado on record until the Moore, OK tornado on May 3, 1999. As of today, it is ranked as the 10th costliest. As of 2015, The Joplin, MO tornado on May 22, 2011 is the costliest at $2.8 billion.
8. 45 people died in the Wichita Falls tornado. 25 of those deaths were vehicle related. 16 of those 25 vehicle related deaths were from people leaving their homes to escape the tornado. 11 of those 16 people’s homes were untouched by the tornado.
9. After extensive engineering analysis, it was determined that the winds necessary to cause the most intense damage observed like that of McNiel Junior High School were within the F-4 range.
10. As deadly as the Wichita Falls tornado was, it could have been much worse had it not been for the aid of storm spotters in the field reporting the tornado, advanced warnings from the National Weather Service, and the time the tornado hit the city. Many schools were on Easter break. Had McNiel Junior High been fully occupied during the tornado, it is assumed that many more injuries and deaths would have likely occurred.
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