The wild weather season has arrived.
Here’s a look at the deadliest tornadoes to strike Oklahoma since 1875, as reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and The Oklahoman.
NOAA recommends death counts for the 1800s and early 1900s be treated as estimates since tornado death records were erratic back in the day, and it notes some of the events could be composed of multiple tornadoes along a path of damage.
No. 10: A ‘mean wind’
The furious funnel that struck Bethany on Nov. 19, 1930 marked a rarity in Oklahoma tornadic tradition. It’s one of just three violent tornadoes since 1900 that has occurred in the month of November. The twister sliced into Bethany, where it killed 23 people, injured 150 and destroyed or damaged a quarter of the town.
Compounding the tragedy? Five students and a teacher were killed when the tornado hit Camel Creek school, about 3.5 miles west of Wiley Post Airport, ripping apart the building just as the students and staff sought shelter and fell to the floor.
A 3-year-old Bethany resident, Charline Moore, told nurses who treated her that ‘a mean wind’ destroyed the home, The Oklahoman reported at the time.
Source: NOAA, The Oklahoman
No. 9: Massive destruction in Moore
The deadly grinder that struck the Oklahoma City metro on May 20, 2013 has something terrible in common with the 1930 twister that’s No. 10 on this list: Kids died at school.
The twister hit south Oklahoma City and Moore especially hard, obliterating whole neighborhoods and two schools.
On the ground for 50 minutes, the EF5 tornado killed 24, including two infants, a 4-year old and seven children who died inside Plaza Towers Elementary.
While history continues to repeat itself, efforts to install storm shelters in every Oklahoma school have failed.
At its strongest point the storm pitched a 10-ton propane tank a quarter mile, like a discarded toy. There were also incredible stories of survival.
No. 8: Chaos in Cleveland County
The massive twister, at one point more than a mile and a quarter wide, cut a 15-mile path from northwest of Newcastle through what is now part of Moore, sweeping away homes like specks of dust on April 25, 1893. Thirty three people lost their lives in the carnage.
According to NOAA:
No. 7: Erratic twin killers
The metro got a taste of Mother Nature’s bad medicine on Friday night, June 12, 1942. The tornadoes that whipped southwest Oklahoma City, including the Capitol Hill neighborhood, that night would be the deadliest ever to hit OKC – until 1999.
The Oklahoman reported that the first tornado dipped down from the sky at 9:30 p.m. in the 3400 block of SW 29. A twin twister followed 10 minutes later “with even greater fury,” The Oklahoman noted. The zig-zagging twisters killed 35 people and injured at least 100. A newspaper report noted a truck load of soldiers from Will Rogers field were in the vicinity returning “to the base” when the storm hit. These first rescue workers jumped from their truck “in double file, pulling victims from ditches and from under crushed houses.”
No. 6: The infamous outbreak
The May 3, 1999 tornado shredded Oklahoma and killed 36 people. It was part of an unprecedented outbreak that Monday evening and afternoon, one of 14 tornadoes produced by a supercell thunderstorm. In all, 44 people lost their lives.
The Oklahoman’s Nolan Clay discovered while out reporting that his house had been destroyed. A worker at a Cracker Barrel pretty much ducked a flying Penske rental truck that crashed into the restaurant by seconds.
No. 5: Twister ravages wartime boomtown
The year 1942 was a bad one for Oklahoma tornadoes.
Fifty two people died and 350 were injured in the tiny wartime boomtown of Pryor on April 27, 1942.
The twister directly hit Main Street and destroyed a third of the town. The Oklahoman reported at the time that a shuttle train normally used to carry defense plant workers between Muskogee and Pryor was instead used to take two carloads of wounded to Vinita. In a freakish twist of fate, the tornado blew rail cars out of the way so the shuttle could aid the injured.
No. 4: A violent ‘Hop and skip’
Antlers, about 140 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, sustained the worst damage after “hop and skip” tornadoes hit Oklahoma on April 12, 1945, killing 69 and injuring 353 people. NOAA explains:
“The tornado moved to the northeast and struck Antlers, passing from the southwest corner of the town through the northeast portion. It produced a damage swath a half mile wide through both business and residential areas, and devastated about a third of the town. Some areas were swept completely clean of all debris. The tornado then continued for another 20+ miles, striking the One Creek area before dissipating near Nashoba, OK.”
The deadly storms didn’t get the top headline in The Oklahoman. That’s because president Franklin D. Roosevelt died unexpectedly on April 12.
No. 3: Jail only building left standing
The May 2, 1920 tornado that hit the tiny town of Peggs in northeast Oklahoma killed 71 people — nearly one-third of its residents — and injured another 100. The Oklahoman’s account of multiple tornadoes to hit the state that day included a “freakish” close call. A man riding in a wagon with eight friends saw the storm approach and hitched his team to a telephone post. He and his friends ran a few yards and fell face-first into a ditch. They lived; the tornado whisked the wagon and team away.
No. 2: Deadly destruction – in grisly detail
Early estimates following a May 10, 1905 tornado that hit Snyder, OK, about 100 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, stated up to 500 had been killed in the town of 1,000. But Oklahoman reporters could only make a best guess at the time. According to an account in The Oklahoman published on May 11, communication and transit were completely cut off; a reporter could only get as far as Hobart, about 30 miles away from the destruction. A more accurate headline followed on May 12: “One hundred lives lost in storm.” The estimate of dead today stands at 97.
The dispatches told “heartrending” and grisly stories about the storm’s victims.
No. 1: The deadliest tornado in Oklahoma history
The deadliest tornado to ever visit Oklahoma ground through Woodward on April 9, 1947 on a three-state tour of destruction.
It struck the city of 5,500 in northwest Oklahoma without warning on April 9, 1947, at 8:42 p.m.
The Oklahoman carried the headline on April 10 “Tornado wrecks Woodward.” A story noted that “frantic and unverified” reports of heavy casualties followed the “terrific tornado” and assured residents that help was on the way.
The tornado took 116 lives.
Tornadoes like the F5 that hit Woodward and other killer twisters that struck in the 1940s, combined with new technology after World War II, prompted the Weather Bureau — now the National Weather Service — to begin its tornado watch and warning program in 1953.
This list of deadly twisters contained a lot of death and destruction. Take heart — I guess — that among the deadliest 25 twisters in the United States, Woodward is No. 6.
And, of course, take cover.
by Juliana Keeping Published: April 20, 2016
