1975-05-06 Omaha F-4 tornado

[JeremyS]

Coming up on the 40th anniversary of the Omaha F-4 tornado that despite carving a path right through the middle of town at 430p only killed 3 people. Pretty surprising considering it's strength and technology back then. Our local media will be posting a lot of stories over the next several days that I will share.
It carved an 8 mile path that to this day ranks among the top 10 costliest tornadoes in US history with damage adjusted for inflation of 1.1 billion dollars.
http://www.omaha.com/weather/nancys...cle_15373f5c-5f48-5138-afee-95fbf9a62797.html

A cool clip/video of some of the emergency audio traffic from that day:
http://www.omaha.com/weather/rememb...cle_43b74d7c-f00f-11e4-8324-b3897489b375.html

 

[John Shewchuk]

I was there. In addition to the memorable severe hail damage to my wife's car, it was the only time I saw a dark-green rotating collar-cloud (or wall cloud) -- but with no funnel yet.

 

[R. A. A. Davis]

I was northeast of Omaha, at a 4-H meeting in Brayton, IA. I've not seen the sky that particular color of green before or since. And it snowed that morning...an inch or so of wet, heavy snow that melted quickly.

A friend of mine was a bookeeper at the Crossroads Mall. She told me how she rode the storm out in a hallway. Another friend remembers his father calling him at school, telling him to come home immediately because of the tornado. They lived in the Benson area. It dissapated just over the Benson Park golf course.

 

[JeremyS]

Here's a webpage with several videos of eyewitness accounts, etc.

http://www.ketv.com/news/1975-tornado/32614560

 

[Lonnie Kopecky]

Also, in addition to the Omaha tornado there were 6 more tornadoes in Nebraska earlier that same afternoon. They occurred in northeast Nebraska, one was an F4 that hit Magnet hard. Overall there were 36 tornadoes in 6 states that May 6th and 7th.