Help Identify this Tornado

Jeff Miller

Jeff Miller

EF5
Joined
Dec 10, 2003
Messages
711
Location
Great Plains
When I was young, I had a copy of the "Young People's Science Encyclopedia". This is a picture of the Tornado I grew up to "fear".

Guess I could just purchase the volume ;) (If the above link doesn't load, just expand the pic in this link, it will come right up.)

Can anyone assist me in telling me what tornado this is, and if there is a better picture of this tornado anywhere else?

Thanks much if anyone can assist.
 
The Cordell Tornado was May 22, 1981.

This photograph was found in the 1962 volume of the Encyclopedia mentioned in the link, so that rules that out, good guess, however. :)
 
I'm 55....and those type of books are what guys and gals in my era grew up with. There were no computers...no "online"...etc. So for homework assignments...lucky households sometimes had books like that, or something similar. The rest of us went to the school library and just looked stuff up. Really....it wasn't that bad!
I DO remember that a couple of standard tornado photos were used in several of those types of books. One was a series of funnel-to-tornado photos from Gothenburg, Nebraska..(from the 1930's I believe), as well as one from Stratford, Texas.
I was unable to successfully link up with the first link you provided...it got me to EBay and just stuck there, but I was a little more successful with the second link. From what little I could see of the tornado on the book's cover, neither of the aforementioned tornadoes looked much like it.
Perhaps I'm like you...I was always fascinated by photos of tornadoes...and for me, it began at a very very early age. And maybe like you now, it was really important for me to find out just WHERE the tornadoes in the books took place. Since I'm a 4th gen. Nebraskan, I remember it was especially rewarding for me to find pictures of tornadoes that occured in Nebraska. I always wanted to find out "how close to grandma and grandpa's farm" a particular tornado within a book was. Hey, I'm telling the truth...I was a "weird" kid! But I'm guessing that a lot of us in the Storm-Track Clan have some eclectic "weirdness" regarding tornadoes deep down inside us, huh! C'mon....fess up!
Actually....that could be a cool topic for another time and place. Something along the lines of "How old were you when you first became obsessed with tornadoes...and what was it that triggered that behavior?" You know, if you're into stuff like "past lives" etc.....well, the conversation could get pretty deep and interesting.
Good luck finding out the answer to the question you're currently "obsessing" (lol) about! Joel in Tucson
 
There is a famous photo of a tornado around Enid, that looks a little like that one, although from a different angle. It was kicking up reddish-orange dirt. That tornado was 60's, or early '70's.
 
Joel, you were a grade ahead of me, so we would have read some of the same books. The photo sequence of the Gothenburg tornado is still drilled into my head, along with--believe it or not--the captions for each panel. Yep, I still remember them: "Mammatocumulus clouds form"; "Funnel cloud descends (or something like that)"; "Funnel begins its destructive course"; "Funnel picks up dust and debris." How's THAT for being the most significant thing I remember from second grade?

Jeff, I just finished looking through the photos in Grazulis's book from 1961 back to 1920. The closest I could find to something that seemed to resemble your tornado was photographed in Cheyenne, Wyoming--funnel looks similar, but the landscape is wrong. Have you tried getting a hold of Snowden D. Flora's "Tornadoes of the United States"?
 
Bob, to me....that's really a "trip" that you can remember the captions that went along with the Gothenburg tornado. It's funny how so many of us can vivedly remember the minutia on things that we were REALLY interested in! And you are right....tee hee heee, those were the captions! Gawd, I had forgotten all that. Wow.
I think it was Rick Schmidt that mentioned that reddish tornado that appeared in some publications a couple of decades back. If it's the one I've seen, it's got some of the most spectacular "motion" in it....showing lots of red Oklahoma dirt wrapping about halfway up the funnel. The pic just drips of tight, fast spinning circulation. The last time I saw that particular pic was in the air about American Airline's Dallas to Omaha flight. This was probably 4-5 years ago. The publication it was in was the American Airlines' own publication....stuffed in the seat pocket of the chair in front of me. I looked for a reference as to where...I turned to the back of the page and saw that the photo was from NOAA's files. Definitely Oklahoma, I want to say that the nader was from the early 80's....maybe late 70's. It was perhaps from Del City, Okla...or the Tulsa area. I got the impression that it was taken by one of the very early Univ of Okla / Norman chase team members. Might even have been chase Icon Gene Moore's shot.
BTW....Gene Moore has one heck of a wonderful website. He's made it full of great things from all his years of chasing. Throughout, he's designed it for any weather enthusiast of most any age who wishes to surf on through and LEARN more than prior to surfing in. Dang....I can't think of the name of it. I think I'll do a Google right now, and make another post with the name. See you in a second! Joel
 
Gene has one of my favorite websites ever. I'm pretty sure it's what cemented my interest in weather years ago.
 
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