My wife was seven years old and living in Blackwell, Oklahoma in 1955. When the tornado came through town she, her two year old sister, and pregnant mother were hiding under a bed in their small house a few blocks from the tornado's path. Her father, of course, was watching it go through town. I recently found these pictures from LIFE Magazine published in a May 1955 issue. I'm posting copies of the pictures for her and for her family and friends that lived through this F-5 monster storm. Better and more pictures from LIFE are available from their archives.
1955 Great Plains Tornado Outbreak
"The 1955 Great Plains tornado outbreak was a deadly tornado outbreak that struck the southern and central U.S Plain States on May 25-26, 1955. It produced at least 46 tornadoes across 7 states including 2 F5 tornadoes in Blackwell, Oklahoma and Udall, Kansas. The outbreak killed 102 from 3 tornadoes while injuring hundreds more. Unusual electromagnetic activity was observed, including St. Elmo's fire ...
The Blackwell tornado formed in Noble County at around 9:00 PM CDT before crossing through the eastern portions of the Kay County town of Blackwell as a 500-yard F5 wedge. It claimed the lives of 20 people in Blackwell and injured over 200 before crossing and dissipating into Cowley County, Kansas. In addition of destroying nearly 200 homes, the tornado also demolished the town's main employers including the Acme Foundry and the Hazel Atlas Glass plant. The local hospital also sustained major damage. Most of the western half of the town spared the worst of the damage..." ----Wikipedia
Photos from LIFE Magazine.
25 comments:
Yep. That's what happened, all right. I remember it well.
The things your parents never tell you...
Yep, the things parents' kids never pay any attention to.
You can call me a weather coward. My my F5 experience was seen off to the north while us youngsters were playing sandlot baseball. "Boy, the sure must be getting it!" My sister at church camp was among dozens of kids hustled to the basment of the main lodge
in the tornado path. Some years later, I married the girl whose family watched buildings blowing by just to the south of their pasture..and went out after to collect dead and injured. In 1975, I watched the roof peel off our mfg plant in Fridley,
MN and dove under my desk
(area already occupied by some lady from accounting).
Out here in mountain country, we don't have them. I'm glad.
I've had several close encounters. All of them have been relatively small storms, but when the May 3,1999 tornado came through central Oklahoma,I watched it live on TV for 2 hours. It varied between an F-1 and F-3 as it moved up from SW Oklahoma. I called all my kids to make sure they knew what was happening. Then SW of Oklahoma City it slowed down and strengthened into an F-4 and then an F-5+. The OKC heat island pushed it to the East and it turned and went through Moore, Oklahoma, Tinker AFB, and then turned back to the NE for a while longer.
Standing in my sun lit and windless front yard I watched the top rotation of the super cell and listened, yes listened, to the tornado rip our city apart as the TV inside blared warnings and locations. I was six miles away in a direct line.
Three days later I flew out of OKC to Cincinnati. The path of the tornado was a giant reddish brown "S" across the city as we flew over. It was not unlike God had taken his index finger and smeared away everything down to the dirt.
It should be recorded that within a year or so of the Blackwell F-5 tornado, My father-in-law packed up his family and moved to Southern California.
BB there were 21 high-school kids on an end-of-school trip from Minnesota visiting the Severe Storms Lab in Norman in the 99 storm. When it first appeared it was a small cell popping out F-1s.
So the spotters and Doppler Radar trucks just piled the kids into their vehicles and were going to give them some real world experience. But then the storm grew and grew and got worse but there was no way they could stop to take the kids back. Those students got the E-ticket ride of tornado chasing that day.
Yep, add 24 years to the clothes and vehicles, and those are the B&W news pix from WF in '79.
I enjoyed reading your post. My mom dad and 4 siblings lived across from the Riverside Park. Their house was destroyed. When the tornado hit they were thrown into the park. I remember growing up looking a all the pictures and hearing the stories.
My grand parents were in the tornado in Blackwell. They were walking up the stairs to go to bed when it hit. There house was destroyed, but they survived. I have never seen pictures before, thank you very much.
thank you for posting these pics. I have never seen any. I was seven years old when this tornado hit and my mother was working late at the Ford dealership. My Dad and I were in the cellar. It was an awful tornado, thank God we all survived.
I was 4 yrs. old we lived in ponca city and I remember dad driving us to see blackwell after the tornado and I remember a baby bed against a wall of a house that was once there. trees everything was stripped, we packed up and moved to corpus christy, texas, california but came home to Oklahoma. I lived on a farm between blackwell and ponca city for 29 years and saw a lot of funnels and tornadoes move towards newkirk, oklahoma once blowing up a neighbors house after they went to work and killing a lot of sheep. It was a bad site to see.
B
I have a brother-in-law who went thru that storm. He was about 10 at the time. He told me their cellar was so full of people that he, his brother, and father had to ride out the storm in their house. The tornado passed 1 block east of his house.
He said it sounded like a freight train as it went by. The plaster on the walls cracked and fell and he said it felt like he had a vice on his head.
After it passed by they observed the tornado from the front porch. He told me it looked like a pillar of fire since it had so much lightnimg in it.
He told me it was the scariest event he's ever been thru and to this day he still freaks out when severe weather strikes.
This post will be here a long time.
This seems to be a good place to post personal remembrances of this event. So anyone else that reads it feel free to do so, anonymous or not.
How we lived through that night I still cannot believe it. We had seven kids in our family and it destroyed our house..leveled it with us in it. Have!e very healthy respect for a tornado. The lightening that night was SPOOKY and the wind HORRIBLE...Glad we all though with injuries survived.
I lived on the north end of "B" street then and the tornado was about 100 yards away in the Chikaskia river bottoms. The front of the house was torn up and the huge pecan trees in our front yard just disappeared. Nothing but sticks left. I was about 8 then and still remember the noise.
Thank you for this site--I vividly remember this tornado! I was 13 years old at the time & our family lived on a farm South of town..We were having our 'last day of school program' that evening at Union School. Everyone stood outside the school & watched it pass directly to our East--a huge cloud on the ground with 2 funnel clouds trailing it. A very scary night!
Hey there feller i am a oklahoma boy my self the marine corps took me to florida town anyways i have a short dvd film made by a guy in blackwell where i was born if you could get back to me i would love to share it with you , usmc_cpljones_69@yahoo.com
thanks
I was 10 years old, we lived on a farm about 10 miles SW of Blackwell. My Grandparents lived on East Bridge Street 2 blocks east of Riverside park. We had been to Blackwell to shop and had dinner with my Grandparents.Fried chicken, fresh tomatoes and corn from their garden. School was out and it was feeling like summer. It was a beautiful evening but we saw the sky getting dark blue and Daddy said we needed to get home before the storm. My Father, Mother and 9 year old brother and I drove south to Hubbard road then west to our farm on the Kay county line. We got home before dark. We turned on TV and watched the weather man from Oklahoma City. There were warnings for our area and we could see small tornado tails dipping out of the clouds west of the farm. We spent a few hours in our cellar and when we came back to the house and turned on the TV they said there had been a tornado in Blackwell. We were all scared. My Mother tried to call her parents and her brothers who lived in Blackwell. Of course we could not get through. We got in the car and drove to Blackwell, but state troopers had the road south of the town blocked. We begged them to let us in to check on family. We had news on the car radio and drove around east towards Ponca City, again trying to find a road where we could get into Blackwell. It is a blur now, I don't know exactly what we did, but I do know we did not sleep all night. I don't think we went home so must have stayed in the car and just driven around listening to the radio. It was daylight when we finally got in. There were National Guard troops stationed at all the streets leading into the devastated area. They let us through and we drove a block or so then walked to our Grandparents house. Everything was just rubble, boards, upside down cars, stubs with a few broken limbs that had been beautiful Old Elm trees, not really any street, because everything was covered with wood, tin, curtains, mattresses, sofas and junk. Our Grandparents house was on the right side of the street, The roof was off of their chicken house, tree limbs broken, their garage with an apartment above had windows out, but their yellow house was whole (mud and leaves splattered but all there)
One of my Uncles and his wife and 3children lived on the other side of town but had come to the house to take shelter in the basement. It had an outside door on the ground, that you picked up to go down steps under the house. My Uncle and Grandfather said they used all the strength they had to hold that door shut. They believed they would have been sucked out if the door had opened. The houses across the street all had their roofs gone, the house to the west was quite damaged, but the worst devastation was in the blocks west and northwest of their home. My Grandfather worked at the Hazel Atlas Glass Plant and it never reopened. We have some amazing photos of the day after.
My mother, Karen O'Meara Geer, lived through this tornado. She was 12. Her family's home was 3 sections north of town and took a direct hit. Her mother Amy Baty O'Meara was there with her 5 kids, two neighbor couples and their kids. That thing took the linoleum off the floor and left nothing but the new gas stove behind. That and the people. My mother was practically scalped and her brother's arm broken, but aside from that they were uninjured. Mom says it hit and then stopped and everyone started to get up, then one of the neighbors said, "get back down, it's not done yet." That thing had an eye.
The storm hit two days before my 6th birthday. One of my brothers was out on the front porch and said "Daddy, come look at this funny cloud..." My father went out and then everything was just crazy. I didn't know what was going on. I was put in the hall with a mattress thrown over me. I have no idea where everyone else was and I had no idea what in the world was going on. We actually had a cellar but my mother just panicked and didn't even think about it. We lived on the southwest side of town so we didn't get the damage. I remember for weeks and weeks afterwards playing "tornado" with the neighborhood kids.
Beverly Bryant said: I was two months old -- my parents threw me in a laundry basket and headed to the neighbor's cellar. I, of course, have no memories of it.
I was 12 and remember that night well. We lived on the west side of town on Blackwell Ave and were spared damage or physical injury. My dad was lical National Guard commander at the time. He took me to see the edge of the destroyed area. A night I will never forget.
I remember that night. Years later my mom and your Grandmother Amy were grest friends. She was a nice lady.
I remember that night. Years later my mom and your Grandmother Amy were grest friends. She was a nice lady.
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