The Great 1925 Tri-State Tornado, the Worst in US History.

Eighty years and one week ago at 1:01 p.m., the Great Tri-State Tornado of March 18, 1925, started its uninterrupted 219-mile trek from its origin in the Missouri Ozarks. At an average speed of between 56 and an astounding 73 miles per hour (more than twice the speed of an average tornado), the Great Tri-State Tornado tore across Missouri, southern Illinois, and finally lifted three and one-half hours later in southwestern Indiana. The wall of violent blackness killed 695 people, injured 2027 people, destroyed 15,000 homes, and damaged more than164 square miles (almost 50 times the average tornado). Many schools were demolished, killing large numbers of children. For example, 33 children died in the school in DeSoto, Illinois. The path of the tornado on average was three-fourths mile wide, and at times one mile wide. The Great Tri-State set tornado records against which meteorologists still measure tornados for length of track, forward speed, deaths, and duration.

Path of Tri-State Tornado, March 18, 1925
Source: http://www.atmos.albany.edu/student/tomjr/tristatetrack.gif.

The Great Tri-State Tornado struck mining town after mining town, prosperous farm after prosperous farm, and railroad town after railroad town, including Murphysboro, Illinois (1925 population: 12,000, tornado deaths: 234) where geography professor and author of “The Forgotten Storm” (2002), Wallace Akin, experienced its effects first-hand as a two-year old whisked up into his mother’s arms. Akin writes, “At the beginning of the new millennium, in this last chapter of my life, I seem to have come full circle, caught up once more in the awesome power of that great event which so shaped my life. I return to the scenes of my early years, growing up in the aftermath of the great storm that is all but forgotten even by many professional meteorologists. It is my privilege to share its story and perhaps to help return it to its rightful place as one of the nation’s great natural disasters.” (p. xiii)

Destruction left by the Tri-State Tornado in Murphysboro, Illinois
Source: http://utvols.8m.com/1925.html.

Most scientists concur that along most of its path, the Tri-State Tornado met the test of an F5 rating, meaning that estimated wind speeds of 261-318 mph caused “incredible damage,” such as obliterating well-constructed houses and leaving only foundations. The late Professor T. Theodore Fujita of the University of Chicago developed The Fujita Scale of Tornado Destruction (F-scale), which the National Weather Service and weather services worldwide use as the basis for evaluating storm damage from tornadoes and downbursts. The F-scale is not perfect because, according to Akin, “it does not take into account variations in building construction when the damage is assessed, not does it measure storms that cause no structural damage; thus, it is not applicable to tornadoes or downbursts in open country.” (p. xv)

Fujita Tornado Scale Table
http://kyclim.wku.edu/BRADD/tornadoes/tornadoes.html Accessed July 6, 2005 .

Akin recounts many first-hand stories of what people experienced as the tornado ripped into town, as he remembered the stories told and retold while growing up in Murphysboro, all the while attending the schools that had been rebuilt after being demolished by the tornado. Here is a typical story related by Akin: “Alice Temure, 70, a paralytic, lived on the outskirts of Gorham. She was lying in her bed when the weather became ominous. Sitting nearby, her husband and their son, Paul, both peered out the bedroom window past the great elm tree in the yard, commenting on the increasing darkness. From this window they had a panoramic view of a hill and, across from it, a cornfield.

“ Alice recalled her terror: ‘I could feel the tornado lift the house. It must have been raised ten feet form the ground and was whirled around the big elm tree. The branches stuck through the windows. Then there was a great splintering and cracking and one wall fell outward. I felt myself going through the air. I was stunned and when I came to I was lying in the cornfield across the hill. There is a little creek there and my feet were in the water. At my side was my husband. A great [railroad] spike had been driven through his lip. ‘I’m dying Alice, dear,’ he said to me. And we laid there and prayed together.’

“Paul, who had managed to hold on inside the house, extracted himself from the wreckage, and set off in search of his parents. He found them across the hill where the storm had deposited them. Kneeling down, he carefully lifted his injured father and carried him back to the yard, leaning him against the elm tree. Then he returned for his mother and carried her back, but by the time he returned to his father’s side he was dead.” (p. 45)

The tornado came and went quickly from each town in its path, leaving destruction behind as it carried debris forward to the next town. For example, West Frankfort, the most important mining and manufacturing center in southern Illinois in 1925, had a population of approximately 18,000. Its major employers operated two of the largest underground coal mines in the US: New Orient No. 2 and Old Ben No. 8. Many other large mines were also in this “Little Egypt” coal belt area. “When the Tri-State Tornado struck West Frankfort, 800 miners labored underground at New Orient No. 2….The first inkling of trouble for miners underground came with a violent rush of air down the ventilating shaft that blew its doors open and collapsed its timbers. Such a blast of air indicated the possibility of an explosion in some part of the mine. Then the lights went out, machinery ground to a halt, and the hoist ceased to rise and descend in the main shaft. …The bottom boss, taking no chances, organized an orderly escape. Miners lit the carbide (acetylene) lamps attached to their hats and hurriedly lined up in single file near the air shaft where zigzag escape ladders provided access to the surface and, one by one, all 800 climbed to the top. It took about sixty minutes.” (p. 88)

The tornado had reduced to kindling more than 500 miners’ homes near the mine, not sparing the women and children in them. “They ran toward their wrecked homes and set to work digging out the dead and wounded. Since these neighborhoods had no paved streets a downpour that had followed the storm created an almost impassable mire; rescuers slipped and slid as they carried out the dead and wounded on improvised stretchers.” (p. 90)

“Although a complete medical team had climbed down at West Frankfort prepared for work, they discovered local doctors coping so well there was need for all of them, and some left to help out in nearby small towns. Local hospitals were filled, and churches, service organizations, and many homes had become improvised clinics. West Frankfort had turned chaos into order. Policemen patrolled and the dead lay in rows awaiting identification.” (p. 92)

One reporter from the St. Louis-Dispatch made it to West Frankfort by 11:15 pm (some 8 hours after the tornado struck) and described the scene he witnessed this way:

“On the streets of the city, strangely silent crowds shifted about. Ambulances shot back and forth with noisy bells. The congestion of the wounded in their resting places, and activities of willing volunteers increased the confusion…There was no outcry from the sufferers. Here and there one moaned in agony. ..Men with fractured skulls lay quiet. Strangers comforted children with broken limbs. Maimed women sought news of their babies. Youths who could move a bit begged cigarettes. Those who needed major operations but had to wait their turn submitted gladly to opiates as physicians reached them. Everywhere the glare of electric lights and the stir of people kept the wounded awake.” (p. 93)

Engineering committee examining a 1X5 inch board
which was driven through a 2X6 plank in southern Illinois.
Source: http://epod.usra.edu/archive/images/main_wea00239.jpg

The most important factors that made the tornado so destructive to life and property, according to a report by a team of structural engineers in 1925 were:

1. Lack of any tornado forecast.

2. Lack of immediate warning that a massive tornado moved in their direction.

3. Exceptionally high speed of forward movement.

4. Unusually large storm.

5. Lack of adequate shelter.

6. Lack of tornado appearance.

7. Poor construction techniques. (pp. 128-130)

Of these seven, the first two are considered the most important.

1. Lack of any tornado forecast.

Why did the US Weather Bureau (forerunner of the National Weather Bureau) in St. Louis and Chicago not include a tornado forecast? Akins writes: “The answer lies in the official regulations of the time. In 1925, the US Weather Bureau forbade government meteorologists to use ‘tornado’ in forecasts or in official reports, fearing such scare words might alarm citizens and curtail the general flow of commerce. The word ‘tornado’ appeared only in summaries published months after the severe weather occurred.

“This restriction had not always been in effect. As early as the 1880s successful tornado forecasting was evolving under the direction of Lieutenant John Park Finely of the US Army Signal Corps, but General Adolphus Greely, new chief of the Corps, put an end to this research in 1887 although he realized the danger from tornadoes. He banned the word ‘tornado’ in public forecasts, reasoning that the exact point of touchdown could not be predicted (even today exact predictions are not possible)….Writing in the Weather Bureau’s Monthly Weather Review, in April of 1925, the editor summarized the prevailing ignorance: ‘it must be reluctantly admitted that there is little hope that the actual conditions that initiate a tornado vortex will ever be experimentally observed.’” (p. 4)

When was the ban on tornado forecasts finally made by the US Weather Bureau? It occurred almost exactly 57 years ago on March 25, 1948, when two scientists, Major Ernest Fawbush and Captain Robert Miller, assigned to Tinker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City, made their remarkable forecast of an imminent tornado after years of studying Finley’s approach and weather conditions preceding and accompanying tornadoes.

Akin writes that “[i]f my family had received an early tornado warning that day in 1925, we might have been spared some hardship. His father (40 years old at the time), who owned an automobile dealership and repair shop, sustained a near-fatal injury that left him in a coma for several weeks at Barnes Hospital in St .Louis to which he had been transported by train the first day after the tornado. He recovered completely.

2. Lack of immediate warning that a massive tornado moved in their direction.

No organized warning system was in place to link communities to one another so that people could have sought shelter. Phones and telegraph, but no warning system, existed. People first became aware of the tornado when it was upon them. Many women and men were struck and killed or injured by huge numbers of missiles churned up into the air by the tornado, as they ran out of homes and stores to retrieve children at school.

Editor’s Note: The Great Tri-State Tornado of 1925 increased awareness of the need for an integrated warning system for tornadoes and other severe weather. Storm spotters and communications technology helped move this along during the next two decades. But not until 1948 did tornado forecasting begin again (see Biot # 192 “Events Leading to the First US Tornado Forecast on March 1948” at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_192.html.)

Additional source:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent body of the National Weather Service, has a great website devoted entirely to the Tri-State Tornado of 1925, available at: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/pah/1925/.