The 1953 Worcester, Massachusetts, F4-F5 Tornado: Worst Known in New England

Worcester, Massachusetts, situated 40 miles west of Boston, is not a city that many people would associate with a devastating tornado. (1,2) From 1950 to 1996, however, New England counted 395 tornadoes, and one-third of them were in the state of Massachusetts. (3) (By comparison, Iowa during the same time span counted some 1,180 tornadoes.)

On June 9, 1953, at about 5:08 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, an F4-F5 tornado, the most severe in New England’s history, tore across Massachusetts for 46 miles in 84 minutes, stopping before it reached Boston. (4) The tornado disaster resulted in 94 deaths, 1,300 injured, 10,000 homeless, 4,000 damaged buildings and hundreds of damaged cars. Total damages were estimated at about $52 million ($349 million in 2002 dollars). (2,5)

Map showing path of “Worcester tornado” on June 9, 1953. Source: “The Weather Doctor” available at: http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/almanac/ arc2003/alm03jun.htm; accessed April 24, 2007.

Path of the Worcester tornado, 1953. Source: Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1923- [from old catalog]: Tornado in Worcester; an exploratory study of individual and community behavior in an extreme situation, Washington, National Academy of sciences, National Research Council, 1956, copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT. Available online at: http://www.openlibrary.org/details/ tornadoinworcest00wallrich; accessed April 23, 2007.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noted that the “force of this enormous killer carried a huge amount of debris eastward. A music box, a three-foot aluminum trap door and a large piece of a roof were discovered on the grounds of [Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory] 35 miles away [to the east of Worcester]. Debris was also found in Massachusetts Bay [near Weymouth] and out in the Atlantic Ocean.” (5) “Chunks of soggy, frozen mattress fell into Boston Harbor.” (3)

The tornado cloud at two miles distance. This picture was taken at 5:08 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time looking northwest form a position on the east shore of Indian Lake, Worcester, Massachusetts, June 9, 1953. Source: Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1923- [from old catalog]: Tornado in Worcester; an exploratory study of individual and community behavior in an extreme situation, Washington, National Academy of sciences, National Research Council, 1956, copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT. Available online at: http://www.openlibrary.org/details/ tornadoinworcest00wallrich; accessed April 23, 2007.

The Path of the Tornado in Massachusetts
The early days of June 1953 were warm in Worcester, reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the 6th. Temperatures dropped to 76 degrees on the 7th and 8th. The official forecast for central Massachusetts on Tuesday, June 9, 1953, called for “a continuation of hot, humid weather with the likelihood of afternoon thunderstorms, some possibly severe. US Weather Bureau storm forecasters believed there was the potential for tornadoes in New York and New England that afternoon and evening”, but apparently, for a number of reasons, this opinion was not communicated well to the public. (3,6) By midafternoon, three tornadoes had touched down in New England—the one in Worcester, one in Rockingham, New Hampshire, and one in the Massachusetts counties of Norfolk and Bristol to the southeast of Worcester.

The tornado funnel, described as “a huge cone of smoke” first formed over the northern reaches of the Quabbin Reservoir, east of Northampton, Massachusetts, before touching down in a heavily forested area south of the town of Petersham, Massachusetts (29 miles northwest of Worcester) at 4:25 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time). (3, 5) The tornado churned southeastward at about 35 mph toward the community of Barre (22 miles northwest of Worcester) where it killed 2 people, then on to Rutland, Massachusetts (14 miles from Worcester) where it killed 2 more people and on to Holden Massachusetts (9 miles northwest of Worcester) where it killed 9 people.

Map of Worcester showing tornado path in upper right-hand corner. Source: Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1923- [from old catalog]: Tornado in Worcester; an exploratory study of individual and community behavior in an extreme situation, Washington, National Academy of sciences, National Research Council, 1956, copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT. Available online at: http://www.openlibrary.org/details/ tornadoinworcest00wallrich; accessed April 23, 2007.

Ten neighborhoods were impacted by the tornado. Source: Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1923- [from old catalog]: Tornado in Worcester; an exploratory study of individual and community behavior in an extreme situation, Washington, National Academy of sciences, National Research Council, 1956, copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT. Available online at: http://www.openlibrary.org/details/ tornadoinworcest00wallrich; accessed April 23, 2007.

At 5:08 p.m., a local reporter standing on the east shore of Indian Lake, Worcester, saw the tornado two miles distant, describing it as a “dark ominous twister carrying with it boards and debris and raising clouds of dust.” (3) The tornado slashed a path about a mile wide through the northern aspect of the city of Worcester where it killed 60 people, and moved southeasterly to strike Shrewsbury (7 miles southeast of Worcester, 12 killed), Westborough (11miles southeast of Worcester, 6 killed), and Southborough (16 miles southeast of Worcester, 3 killed).

The Tornado Strikes Worcester for 60 Seconds

The tornado was moving at about half-mile per minute, which means that people who saw it when it was two miles away and knew what it was had about four minutes to take protective action. Though “scores of people” were able to reach cellars before the tornado reached them, “probably the great majority of the population of the impact area did not see the funnel, and consequently, did not know that a tornado was approaching them. The experience of these people,” according to anthropologist Anthony F.C. Wallace who in 1956 studied the tornado for the Committee on Disaster Studies-National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences and for the U.S. Department of the Army, “was generally one of considering the darkening of the sky, the rising wind, and the pelting rain to be a summer thunder storm.” (7)

The tornado’s front wall of wind did not blow down structures it encountered, but it blew “windows in or out, depending on whether they were to windward or leeward; plastered buildings with mud; drove debris into people or structures, sometimes driving objects through wooden wall; knocked down or bent over trees, flag poles, hurricane fence; toppled and rolled over cars, shacks, people, and relatively light movable objects; and subjected structures generally to stresses which tended to weaken or displace members.” (8)

Wallace continued: “The most destructive part of the tornado, according to survivors, occurred when the low pressure area inside the tornado reached a position. “The first high wind suddenly stopped and at almost the same instant the air pressure dropped perhaps 10 or 15 per cent, equivalent to two or three pounds per square inch. The quickness of this drop in pressure apparently is dramatic; and it is the sudden drop which seems to account for many of the freak events. In lightly built structures, or structures with a large flat area without ‘escape valves’ like windows, chimneys, doors, etc., the pressure drop meant the equivalent of a sudden application of tremendous forces outward and upward. Actually, of course, the pressure within a structure does not increase; but the withdrawal of air from the outside meant that inside air was pressing out against all objects with about fourteen pounds to the square inch, while the outside air was pushing back with perhaps twelve pounds per square inch: a differential of two pounds. Applied for example to an outside wall of a house eight feet high and ten feet long, there was thus an increase in outward lateral thrust from zero to twelve and a half tons within a period of a few seconds at most; and this occurred immediately following the application of considerable stress, in many instances in an opposite direction, from high velocity wind. Many structures simply exploded: informant after informant describes how, after a few moments of raging wind, the whole building seemed to dissolve, in slow motion, and they would find themselves sitting in quietness and relatively uninjured in the yard, surrounded by pieces of house.

“Where the structure did not ‘explode’, the rush of air from inside proceeded to blow out windows and doors, and to carry out any movable object – including people, refrigerators, television sets, chairs, and tables. This ‘floating away’ was made possible, apparently, by two forces: (1) the lateral evacuation of air through vents like broken windows and doors; and (2) by a vertical differential air pressure, which I think must be postulated to explain the lifting of objects and the frequently referred to ‘floating’ phenomenon.

“An example of this ‘floating’ phenomenon, which baffled victims and added to the uncanniness of the experience, is given by a little girl who was in the kitchen with her mother and father at impact. The mother and daughter were cooking supper, and disregarded the first high wind as being only a bad thunder storm. They had just put the potatoes for baking in the oven when the pressure differential came. A strange thing happened: ‘the potatoes came out of the oven and went over and hit my daddy in the head.’ A woman saw a pane of glass, blown in by the high wind, float gently to the cement floor of her cellar without breaking. Two mothers reported seeing their children float away from their side; each time the mother grabbed the child and pulled it down, like pulling in a balloon floating way. Many observers reported seeing heavy objects float across the floor toward a window, not scraping the floor, and moving slowly.
“One man was carrying a crate of eggs: ‘the eggs were popping out of the crate but they weren’t falling to the ground.’

Rescue of a person covered with mud from the rubble. Source: Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1923- [from old catalog]: Tornado in Worcester; an exploratory study of individual and community behavior in an extreme situation, Washington, National Academy of sciences, National Research Council, 1956, copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT. Available online at: http://www.openlibrary.org/details/ tornadoinworcest00wallrich; accessed April 23, 2007.

Police officer and man help evacuate two women following the tornado impact. Source: Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1923- [from old catalog]: Tornado in Worcester; an exploratory study of individual and community behavior in an extreme situation, Washington, National Academy of sciences, National Research Council, 1956, copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT. Available online at: http://www.openlibrary.org/details/ tornadoinworcest00wallrich; accessed April 23, 2007.

“The explanation of the floating phenomenon must be that when a ‘vacuum cap’ is placed over the area, the ‘free air out-of-doors is sucked out almost instantly; the air within structures goes next; but in-structure pockets of high pressure air remain, particularly under objects like chairs. TV sets and even people, and in places like ovens, eggcrate partitions, etc. It is quite obvious, for instance, that if even so small and dense an object as an egg or a potato or a child’s body were placed between a region of twelve-pound air above and fourteen-pound air below, the pressure differential on the upper and lower surfaces would be sufficient to float it. The pressure differential may help explain how cars, locomotives, and even sidewalks are lifted up.” (9)

Wallace believed that the “explosion” effect was tempered by the “floating effect” which tended to lift the roof off, and push the sides out, rather slowly, so that many “persons were either not covered by the debris, or were not crushed to death when it did come down on them.”

But then, after perhaps 30 seconds of the “vacuum”, the back wall of the hurricane struck people who were now in the open and “finished the job”, by “blowing survivors about, or by blowing debris onto or into them, or both. Some people also ran out of relatively undamaged structures during the vacuum period, and were then swept up by the second high wind.” Wallace notes that the 1-2-3 event was experienced by people in the middle of the path of the tornado people on the fringes would have experienced one long high wind period.

Ten neighborhoods were in the path of the tornado. After it had passed, the survivors entered what Wallace calls the “isolation” period, during which time they exhibited certain behaviors, including the “disaster syndrome”, which is described elsewhere. (10) The isolation period lasted between a couple of minutes and a half hour (average about 15 minutes) until aid in the form of police cruisers, fire equipment, and ambulances reached the area. Telephone lines had not been cut off by the impact, which helped the situation. “Within about a minute at least three telephone notifications to Worcester security units had been made.” (11)

Wallace noted: “Rescue and evacuation operations were conducted mainly by City of Worcester police, fire department, and public works personnel, including both regular employees (off-shift as well as on-shift), auxiliary firemen and policemen (many of whom were enrolled as Civil Defense auxiliaries and wore CD armbands, but had been called out by the heads of the Police and Fire Department Auxiliaries, respectively). These people worked under loose police department supervision, more or less methodically going up and down streets freeing trapped persons, giving minimal first aid and encouragement, and identifying places where rescue equipment (bulldozers, winches, cranes, etc.) would be needed.” (12) The police department controlled many, but not all of the ambulances (some came from funeral parlors and local industrial plants), which convened at the edges of the impact area. There was a terrible traffic jam by 5:30 p.m. “Spontaneous volunteers” directed traffic as hundreds of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters of residents of the impact area, abandoned their cars in the fringes of the impact area and ran into the impact area on foot to help their families.

By 8 p.m., all severely injured persons (but not all bodies) were removed from the impact area. Fires had been extinguished, natural gas lines secured and live wires controlled. The public works personnel cleared a one-way traffic lane through the debris. Resources from other communities began to arrive at around 7:30 p.m., including the only two rescue trucks under the control of Massachusetts State Civil Defense. These trucks carried important rescue equipment and the men trained to use the equipment to find and remove the bodies of missing persons.

City Hospital, the largest in Worcester, had a disaster plan, which it activated at 5:40 p.m. when casualties began to arrive by ambulance, cars, and trucks. The hospital knew about the event earlier because a housewife about 5:15 p.m. or 5:20 p.m. called from Great Brook Valley indicating that casualties were going to arrive because of lighting strike causing a boiler explosion. Newspapermen and families swarmed the hospital as hospital personnel sent patients home to make space for the tornado victims. (13) The total amount of physical trauma produced by the tornado was “very great”. The impact area within the Worcester city limits was approximately two square miles in which lived about 9,000 people, of which not more than about 8,000 were in the area at impact. Of these 8,000 people, 804 were casualties (defined by Wallace as being killed or as being taken to the hospital). Of the 804 casualties, 66 were killed, 327 suffered major injuries, and 411 suffered minor injuries. (14) Most casualties were plastered with water, dirt, sand, wood splinters, which also penetrated deep wounds. Many people had head injuries. Of the 2,500 dwellings in the impact area, 250 were totally destroyed, 1,200 seriously damaged, and about 1,000 slightly damaged.

Budding Meteorologists

The “Worcester Tornado” of 1953 was an extremely memorable event for people who lived through it. In 2003, the city commemorated it (see note #2 below). Three people well-known today in meteorology were young at the time, and cite the tornado as the event that triggered their lifetime interest in weather.

Edwin Kessler was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology bicycling to the store when “he viewed towering cumulonimbus clouds to the southwest and noticed shredded leaves fluttering downward from great heights into the street. He reckoned a mighty windstorm was raging somewhere nearby. A year later, Kessler found a large piece of roofing material in the woods in his new home in Westwood that appeared to have been there for about a year.” (3) Kessler subsequently directed the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, for its first 22 years (1964-1986). (15) He oversaw deployment of Doppler radar systems across the nation, which advanced tornado science, and was a factor in the birth of scientific storm-chasing. (3)

Five-year old Howie Bluestein was growing up in Chelsea, near Boston, when his mother pulled him inside when she heard the tornado warning issued for the Boston area on June 9, 1953. Bluestein went on to study engineering at MIT and eventually pursued a degree in meteorology. He is a professor of meteorology in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. (16)

Thomas Gruzulis, who was 11 years old in 1953, grew up on the south side of Worcester. Though not directly impacted by the tornado, he tried to get into the impact area to view the wreckage but was turned away by National Guardsmen. He too trained as a meteorologist, and is best known for his book on the history of tornadoes. (17)

Notes:

1. The Iroquois Indians of what is now New York State, however, were much impressed with tornadoes that they even had a whirlwind spirit they called False Face, which had a central place in ritual and belief, according to Anthony F.C. Wallace. See: Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1923- [from old catalog]: Tornado in Worcester; an exploratory study of individual and community behavior in an extreme situation, Washington, National Academy of sciences, National Research Council 1956.
2. “1953 Worcester Tornado” at: City of Worcester, Massachusetts, City Clerk. Available online at: http://www.ci.worcester.ma.us/cco/tornado/index.htm; accessed April 23, 2007. Note extraordinary photo collection at this website, shot by Worcester residents Howard T. and Dorothy A. Rourke, and donated to the city on the 50th anniversary o f the tornado in 2003.
3. “The Worcester Tornado of 1953”, Weather Almanac for June 2003. Available online at: http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/almanac/arc2003/alm03jun.htm; accessed April 23, 2007.
4. The Fujita scale is used to rate the intensity of a tornado by examining the damage caused by the tornado after it has passed over a man-made structure. An F4 tornado on the scale is a “devastating tornado”, with winds between 207-260 miles per hour. It levels well-constructed houses, and blows structures with weak foundations some distance. It throws cars about and generates large missiles. An F5 tornado is an “incredible tornado” with winds between 261-318 miles per hour. It lifts strong frame houses off foundations and carries them considerable distances to disintegrate. It generates automobile-sized missiles that fly through the air more than 300 feet. It strips bark from trees, and badly damages steel re-enforced concrete structures. Source: http://www.tornadoproject.com/fscale/fscale.htm; accessed April 24, 2007.
5. “NOAA Marks 50th Anniversary of Third Deadliest Year for Tornadoes”. Available online at: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s1135.htm; accessed April 23, 2007.
6. The reasons, according to one source were as follows: “The Buffalo, New York office warned western New York residents of the possibility for a tornado, but the official forecast released from the Boston office did not mention the threat, based in part on the rarity of Massachusetts tornadoes, and perhaps partly on the potential psychological impact on those residing in the area. Tornado forecasting for public warnings was only in its first full year of implementation, and some resulting in panic in other regions of the country. Warnings had been broadcast in Ohio and Michigan the previous day.” Source: http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/almanac/arc2003/alm03jun.htm; accessed April 24, 2007.
7. Anthony F.C. Wallace: Tornado in Worcester: An Exploratory Study of Individual and Community Behavior in an Extreme Situation. Publication 392, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1956, pp. 34-35. Available online at: http://www.openlibrary.org/details/tornadoinworcest00wallrich; accessed April 22, 2007.
8. Ibid, p. 43.
9. Ibid, pp. 44-46.
10. See SEMP Biot #420: “What is the Disaster Syndrome?”
11. Anthony F.C. Wallace, p. 56.
12. Ibid, p. 73.
13. Ibid, p. 82.
14. Ibid, pp. 49-52.
15. See NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory for more on Dr. Kessler at: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/aboutnssl/admin.php and http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/papers/techmemos/NSSL-23/ek_bodytext.html; accessed April 24, 2007.
16. Dr. Bluestein’s homepage is at: http://weather.ou.edu/faculty_details.php?FacID=25; accessed April 24, 2007.
17. For more on Thomas Grazulis, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_P._Grazulis; accessed April 24, 2007.

Additional Reading:

1. Howard B. Bluestein: Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains, 1999, Oxford University Press, New York.
2. Tom P. Grazulis: The Tornado: Nature's Ultimate Windstorm, 2001, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
3. John Edward Weems: The Tornado, 1977, Texas A&M University Press; Reprint edition (March 1991).