World's Earliest Tornado Photos

[Shawn Schuman]

How about a few old-school videos? I can't seem to get more than one video to show, so the other's just a link.

6/8/1951 Corn, OK. The first tornado ever known to be filmed in the US:

Watch video >

4/30/1953 Warner-Robins AFB:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qd5J86bX2Y

Same tornado:

And a couple of pictures from one of the most spectacular series of photos ever taken on 6/8/1966 in Topeka. They were taken by Perry Riddle, one of the Topeka Capital-Journal's staff photographers. He was about two miles east of Burnett's Mound as the tornado passed over it and roared into the County Fair Estates subdivision.

 

[Jeff Wright]

I think it may have been Stephen King who had a conversation with Carpenter about a dream one of them had (origin of The Mist?) about something huge striding the earth.

The ironic thing was that the time when HPL's fictional ship Alert met a certain inhabitant of R'yleh was mid March, 1925.

I wonder if Tri-State had influenced old H.P Lovecraft

 

[Shawn Schuman]

Ah, I forgot about this excellent series of photos showing the rapid growth of the May 21, 1949 Cape Girardeau, MO tornado.

 

[Bob Hartig]

That Goshen/Elkhart series of photos are some of my favorites. I think I recall Bob H. mentioning Paul Huffman actually took another photo that was unreleased? I might have read it wrong though.

Just noticed this. I probably did say that, Shawn. When I interviewed Paul and his wife, Elizabeth, a few years ago, he mentioned that he had taken seven photos. That puzzled me, because I had only seen the six, and I asked him about it. As I recall, he seemed pretty certain that he had taken seven photos, but I never did get to see the seventh. Now I question my memory, and if it's accurate, then I kind of question Paul's. I have the tape of that interview. I need to go back and listen to it just to satisfy my own curiosity.

That whole northern Indiana part of the Palm Sunday outbreak continues to intrigue me, even haunt me. I lived so close to where it took place when I was a child--just 25 miles from Dunlap--and as an adult, I've spent some extended time exploring the areas that got hit: Koontz Lake, Wyatt, La Paz, the Shore neighborhood by Rainbow Lake, CR15/Us 20, and especially Midway and Dunlap. I've walked through the old Midway Trailer Court grounds a number of times, or what's left of them, and I've stood at the spot where I believe Paul shot his amazing photos that day. An overpass now crosses the part where the tornado went through.