1979-04-10 Wichita Falls

[Matt Starkey]

The new link to the Red River Outbreak:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=events-19790410

 

[TerryWilliams]

In Childress where I grew up, I remember how dark the sky was to the east, southeast that afternoon (I assume I was seeing the storm clouds from Vernon). For an 8 year old it was really scary to see those dark clouds. Also, my dad had to go to Wichta Falls that night after the tornado working with the gas company. He would never talk about what he saw as he worked there. I can't imagine what he saw personally.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Some recently discovered snapshots of the Wichita Falls storm have come to light. Pretty gutsy of the photographer to stand in the path like this:

http://texomashomepage.com/fulltext...{"455995367809568":"og.likes"}&action_ref_map

 

[Greg Higgins]

A little late to this thread but for anyone that's interested, you can go to the Facebook page for the Wichita Falls tornado and look in the "files" section. I have scanned in every paper I can find and uploaded them into the files section. Some of the papers are fairly hard to find on the internet. Enjoy!

 

[KenMcWatters]

I recently noticed that on the NWS 1979 WF tornado page Multimedia link, they removed the link and info about the Skywarn audio recording. I wonder why, as that was a neat footnote to this story and a great way to promote Skywarn to this day.

You can use Internet Archive to see the original page, see the following link: https://web.archive.org/web/20141027083229/http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=events-19790410-multimedia

However that archived page does not preserve the link to the audio recording itself. Since I happened to download it previously and keep a copy on my computer, I have uploaded it to my Google Drive account which should keep it available indefinitely. (It's too big to upload to the WF tornado Facebook page, although that is a great resource for other files.) Here is the direct link to the audio recording of Skywarn that day: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0MT-olxF5UQcUJNRGh6UVFPazQ/view?usp=sharing

As a final note, the entire WF tornado page appears to be offline recently, along with some other weather event pages on the NWS OUN website. However I assume this outage is just temporary.

 

[C. Colin B]

Growing up in WF, I was at work on this ‘Terrible Tuesday’. Already having been in 2-3 tornadoes by age 26 - and with earlier reports of tornadoes in Seymour and Vernon - my eyes were to the sky.
Work was at the corner of 360 (SW Parkway) & Kemp Blvd, so looking west down that long flat road, presented a front row viewing spot to the developing storm coming in due west of my location.
As this was before any spotter training days, I was ignorant of some of the key indicators I know now. But it was obvious from years of storm watching, there was something different and wrong about this storm. I didn’t know of inflow, updraft or rain free bases. But I knew rotation. I knew wall cloud. And somehow I knew there was a reason to stand outside of work and keep watching this storm develop.
One of the most vivid mental pictures was to the left of what I now know was a strong updraft tower of grey clouds, was this beautiful open space of bright blue sky with white cumulonimbus clouds protruding to the south, from behind that grey tower. The stark difference in the beauty of the white puffy clouds and bright blue sky against the menacing grey storm was surreal.
But the peace & beauty of the moment quickly disappeared as I saw the first small funnel dip downward. Then there were 2. Then 3 or more dancing down & up and around the lowered clouds now brewing to the west. I broke my gaze, turning my head to alert other workers inside. When I turned back to the storm, the dancing ‘faries’ were now engulfed by a monster, wedge tornado in contact with the ground....... part 1

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Hard to believe we're coming up on the 40th Anniversary of this outbreak. I think it was this, Woodward, Dallas (1957) and Pond Creek, OK (1991) being in all the tornado history books and/or home videos that got it in my head that early April is more active in the southern Plains than it really is.

 

[Mike Potts]

Very late reply here...
I was 8 years old on April 10 and in many ways it still seems like it just happened. My family and I had a front row seat to the tornado, we were living on the southwest side of Lake Wichita and could see the whole event. My Mom and Dad watched the initial formation and Mom kept calling me to come look, but I was busy with a book. When I finally did go to the back porch, it was just starting to move into the city, just a massive greyish/black, boiling monster, the sound was just awe inspiring. I asked Dad why all those birds were flying around it and he solemnly said, "No son, those are parts of houses." About the time it got just due north of our location, it either took a little jog to the right or grew and that was all it took for Mom to scoop up my sister and I and make Dad head for a shelter that was on our neighbors property about a 1/4 mile down the road, so I missed the last half of it tearing through town. We never actually went into the shelter and Dad turned our car around as soon he saw it was heading out of town. We drove in to town looking for a family friend that Dad had called to warn, his house was directly in the path and had no shelter. Dad had managed to get him on the phone and tell him the tornado was headed their way, the friend looked outside and said he couldn't see anything but just a black cloud then the line went dead. We found him, his wife and 2 kids in his work truck on Southwest Parkway about a half mile from where their house had been. Thankfully they only suffered cuts and scrapes, but the truck had a body lodged under it. We later found out it was a teenager who was riding his bike home. Funny thing is, I vividly remember picking our way though the debris down Southwest Parkway, driving on the median, the looks on our friends faces, but I cannot recall that kid no matter how hard I try. I guess my 8 year old brain just decided that part wasn't worth recording. We now live on 281, about 20 miles north of Jacksboro and I work at the hospital there, and my mind flashed back to 1979 as I was driving in to work through the damage path just 30 minutes after the tornado had passed through.

 

[Jeff Wright]

The film made the thing look even more evil. Camcorders make the night look hideous with old sodium and mercury vapor lights when COPS first came on and are best for true crime…but film cameras are best for tornadoes and horror films.