To Build a Tornado

Not one, but three violent tornadoes struck the Omaha metro area in a single hour Easter Sunday 1913. What weather conditions built those tornadoes? Could they recur? By guest author Evan Kuchera, USAF meteorologist

[Nebraska’s centennial commemorations of the devastating Omaha tornado on Easter Sunday 1913 left Department of Defense meteorologist Evan Kuchera, stationed at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, with two burning questions: What meteorological conditions led up to such an extraordinary tragedy? Could those conditions recur today? Below is a condensation of a presentation he gave on his first results—a tour de force of sleuthing! –T.E.B.]

The Omaha tornado of March 23, 1913—rated as a violent F4 with a funnel of destruction a quarter-mile wide—still ranks as Nebraska’s deadliest, single-handedly claiming more than 100 lives (see “’My Conception of Hell’”) and as the 13th deadliest twister in the nation. But it did not act alone. Ten minutes 

Map of the modern Omaha metro area with the approximate tracks of what were called the Yutan, Omaha, and Council Bluffs tornadoes. From west to east, all three F4 tornadoes—some of the most violent that occur—struck within 20 miles and 45 minutes. Credit: Evan Kuchera

earlier and 25 minutes later, two other violent F4 tornadoes also struck what is now the same metropolitan area, killing another 50 people.

Given that, on average, there are only maybe 10 such violent F4 tornadoes per year in the entire U.S., to have three of them hit 10 to 20 miles apart in the same metro area within a single hour is truly remarkable. It also begs the important question: could it happen again? 

To ascertain the odds, it’s necessary to figure out the larger context within which they formed.

Eight F4 and F3 tornadoes led to at least 201 deaths in Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri Easter night, March 23, 1913; they were accompanied by other weaker ones in those states plus several in Kansas (not shown). The three that struck what is now the Omaha metropolitan area are the three tornadoes named “Omaha,” “Yutan,” and “Council Bluffs.” Credit: Trudy E. Bell

First I went back to original 1913 weather reports as well as several dozen newspaper accounts from four states (scans supplied by historian/science journalist Trudy E. Bell) and plotted data by hand; then my meteorologist colleague and coauthor Jeff Hamilton ran the data through a supercomputer simulation tool to see if we could reconstruct a more complete picture of the meteorological events according to current scientific understanding.

Buried data about the freakish storm system

In 1913, the average lay person in Nebraska or other tornado-prone areas recognized that tornadoes occurred on unusually warm and humid days, produced by odd-looking parent thunderstorms that usually moved from southwest to northeast. People knew they needed to go below ground to escape, and often there was a calm before the storm.

Types of observational data Kuchera consulted

But these Easter 1913 tornadoes were unexpected, if not freakish, in many ways. In Nebraska, March is early for tornadoes; peak tornado season is May and June. Quotes from many people in newspapers as well as a meteorologically savvy professor at Creighton College (now University) indicated that Easter Sunday must not have been a very hot or oppressive day. Highs that day approached 60 degrees, and no reports earlier in the day suggest that anyone perceived the weather as being unusually sultry or warm for the end of March—and those informal reports are backed by the recorded official data. That is meteorologically significant because cool air holds less moisture and less heat energy than warm air.

Daily weather map from a NOAA archive shows a high-pressure system to the east and a low-pressure system approaching from the west, drawing up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.

A daily weather map in the archives of today’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that at 8 AM Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, a significant high-pressure system was receding to the east, and a low-pressure system was approaching out of Colorado. That’s a standard storm track in the winter. Little arrows indicate the clockwise flow around the high and the counter-clockwise flow around the low, indicating that moisture was being pulled up from the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Also—as you would expect for a storm system that could produce tornadoes as early as late March—the low-pressure system is very strong.

National Weather Service personnel as well as volunteer cooperative observers (the NWS Cooperative Observer Program COOP, started in 1890, still continues today) recorded prescribed observations in the morning and evening, typically at 7 AM and 7 PM Central time, called 1Z and 13 Z on the charts (Z stands for Zulu, or Greenwich Mean Time, a universal reference regardless of time zone; there was no daylight saving time in 1913). Scans of these official reports, archived by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and extending back well over a century, are accessible in an online database. From these reports, we can reconstruct a surprising amount of information about how the powerful storm system developed over Nebraska on Easter Sunday 1913.

Kuchera consulted the handwritten reports from cooperative observers all around Nebraska. Such COOP reports show high and low temperatures, precipitation, prevailing winds, and comments for significant events. In some regions, these reports are quite dense (one per county) for Nebraska, sparsely populated in 1913. This one for the month of March 1913 was from the COOP observer in Osceola in Polk County. Courtesy National Climatic Data Center

For example, the COOP observer in Osceola, about 60 miles west of Omaha, noted that about 4:30 PM, the wind there shifted from the south to the northwest. In 1913, no one yet had the concept of a front—the leading edge of a cold or warm air mass—so they were not able to say that a front came through, and just noted the wind shift. But based on the other data I’ve seen and my knowledge of meteorology, 4:30 PM would have been the time the cold front would have moved through Osceola. Indeed, this wind-shift comment was extremely helpful in placing the position of that cold front at 4:30, which is an actual observation I would not have otherwise had. 

The observer also noted “Omaha tornado.” That notation gives a sense of the weather savviness of these volunteers: they understood that a wind shift was related to thunderstorms and tornado weather. So they knew that the front that came through Osceola at 4:30 PM was likely the cause of what happened to their east an hour or so later.

Mapping the weather details

From the National Weather Service data in Monthly Weather Review, I plotted by hand all the high temperatures across more than half a dozen states on Easter Sunday, March 23 1913. Note that there was a lot of cold air north of this low-pressure system: northwestern Nebraska had 30s for highs, while south of Nebraska temperatures reached the 80s. The temperature gradient is very tight: there was a rapid change of temperature across a short distance—a sure indication of a strong weather system.

Kuchera’s hand analysis of Easter Sunday high temperatures

But my plot of high temperatures reveals another significant feature. Note the little patch of temperatures that exceeded 80 degrees in Kansas and Oklahoma, and how that is nudging toward southeastern Nebraska. That is evidence of the presence of a dry line. The dry line is the demarcation between the mass of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and the mass of arid inland air from the Rocky Mountains to the west. Typically, the highest temps are right along the dry line. You frequently see a dry line set up in situations like this: the low pressure system draws warm moist air up from the south, but warm dry air is already in place, so a boundary forms between the two even though there is not any strong temperature change across the boundary. 

Kuchera’s summary of observations of dust, high winds, hail, and rain in the COOP reports for Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, hand-plotted on a map of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri counties.

From COOP reports and comments, I also able to synthesize a storm report summary as you would see today. On a map of counties in four states, I plotted dust (D), strong winds (W), hail (H), and rain (R). The dust observations reveal the extent of the dry line where warm, dry, dust-laden air made it across Kansas and neighboring states (see “Great Easter 1913 Dust Storm, Prairie Fires—and Red Rains”). Kansas had few rain reports, hinting that there were not widespread thunderstorms as there were up in Nebraska. Thus, a lot of the Kansas winds were not related to thunderstorms, but were gradient winds associated with the low-pressure system. On the other hand, the high winds in Nebraska are associated with the thunderstorms. My plot reveals the high concentration of severe weather where the thunderstorms came through, but there was other severe weather as well, notably hail and severe winds.

Kuchera’s map of the Great Plains plotting observed temperatures (T), dew point temperatures (Td), and winds for 7 AM Easter Sunday morning 1913 reveals why tornadoes 10 hours later near Omaha were so unexpected. Winds are indicated by the little barbs with the flags:  The direction the barbs point shows wind direction, and the number of flags on the barb is sustained wind strength (e.g., two flags indicate 20 knots or nautical miles per hour). Temperatures at 7 AM are numbers in red, and dew points are numbers in green.

I also plotted winds, temperatures, and dew points for 7 AM Central (13Z) Easter morning. The dew point is the temperature at which dew can form: the higher the dew point, the more humid the air and the greater the chance of severe weather. The threat of tornadoes increases when dew point temperatures exceed 55 degrees—areas shaded in darker green. The map shows that mass of moist air was nowhere near Nebraska 10 hours before the tornadoes. 

In Omaha itself, it surprised me to see that—for such powerful tornadoes that afternoon—the morning temperature was 40 degrees. There was certainly no clue that morning that there would be severe weather later that day. It was a typical cool March morning. Yes, some winds had picked up from the south, but March in Nebraska is a windy time, so that in itself is not altogether unusual. Several locations show 20-knot winds, there is a 25-knot wind at Amarillo, Texas. But that morning, few features were yet in play.

Kuchera’s map for 7 PM Easter Sunday evening of the Great Plains plotting winds, temperatures, and dew point temperatures reveals the meteorological conditions shortly after most of the deadly tornadoes had passed (another F4 still had yet to form in Missouri). It reveals the moisture from Oklahoma and Texas rapidly moved north that day: note three or even four flags on some barbs, meaning a 30- or even 40-knot sustained wind, which is incredibly strong.

Twelve hours later (7 PM Easter evening in Nebraska, or 1Z March 24), official readings were taken shortly after most of the tornadoes had passed. Plotting that data reveals what we now know was the low-pressure front in western Iowa where the tornadoes had just ended. Observations recorded in Lincoln and Omaha both show that the winds have switched to the north and the temperatures have plummeted. 

But note how the dew points in Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois have all dramatically jumped up in the upper 50s or around 60, whereas the morning dew points in those areas were in the 40s or even in the 30s. That reveals that Gulf of Mexico moisture moved rapidly north up from Oklahoma and Texas, across Kansas, and into Nebraska and Iowa—brought by sustained winds of up to 40 knots. Those are incredibly strong sustained winds. Together, the dew points and winds recorded indicate that this Easter 1913 low pressure system was very intense, drawing up moisture very fast.

Note the similarity of this generic map of conditions ripe for tornadoes to the map of meteorological conditions on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, which Kuchera was able to synthesize from 1913 observations to deduce the positions of the warm and cold fronts and dry line

The dashed line indicates the position of the dry line. How do I know where it likely was? Official weather records document that in Dodge City that the dew point was only 15, so we know the dry line is east of there. But in Wichita the dew point is still 58, so we also know that the dry line is still to the west. The dry line could have been anywhere between these two observations. But the newspaper accounts from Trudy allowed me to time when and where weather features moved through. The data also allowed me to provide my best guess for the locations of the cold front (blue triangles) and warm front (red half-circles) were at 7 PM Easter night.

Reconstructing the crime scene

So much changed in under 12 hours. As the low-pressure system intensified, strong frontal systems developed, so it is not surprising some violent tornadoes emerged. Because they developed about two hours before the official reports, we don’t have official observations directly from that time. But important clues in the COOP reports, newspaper accounts, and later scientific articles allow us to reconstruct weather conditions leading up to the major tornado outbreak. 

For example, a 1914 journal article written by G.E. Condra and G.A. Loveland, two professors at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, stated that the relative humidity in Lincoln jumped from 53% to 78% from 2150Z to 2230Z—that is, from 3:50 PM and 4:30 PM local time. When the relative humidity jumps like that, it’s one of two things: either the temperature dropped so you have the same amount of moisture in colder air, or the temperature stayed the same and the moisture content went up. The cold front could not have gone through Lincoln yet because the wind shift wasn’t recorded in Osceola—which is west of Lincoln—until 4:30 PM; thus, there’s no way the front could have been all the way to Lincoln yet. So the humidity jump must mean that over a 40-min period these high dew pts arrived, and they arrived very quickly. That relative humidity change corresponds to about a 10-degree jump in dew point—a really large, substantial jump in a severe weather situation. 

Now, the Omaha tornado started in Lincoln started right around 23Z, that is, around 5 PM local time. So, essentially, the moisture required to create the tornado arrived in Lincoln an hour before the storms formed. The timing on this intersection of events is just impeccable: the very intense low-pressure system, the arrival of all that moisture, and then the cold front and dry line all came together right like magic in the late part of the day. 

Kuchera’s deduced estimate of weather conditions around 5 PM Easter Sunday 1913—the final map of the “magic moment” when all the conditions met to create the family of violent tornadoes.

The major tornadoes all developed roughly in the next hour. As the cold front/dry line came through, you can imagine all the thunderstorm activity out in front of it. This is what I originally set out to do with this project and sleuthing: to make this map reconstructing the surface chart at that time, based on all the information and data I had and modern meteorological knowledge.

Some descriptions from various people are meteorologically significant. The professor at Creighton noted that immediately behind the Omaha tornado, the sky was clear right up to the cirrus cloud and that the cumulonimbus banked “mountain high” behind the tornado, the highest he’d ever seen. His desciption is painting a very dramatic picture of what the storm actually looked like. He also reported not much rain as the tornado passed, although a heavy thunderstorm followed 15 minutes later. 

Because that same sequence of events was also observed in Lincoln, I’m thinking two things: First, along the cold front itself there was a solid line of thunderstorms. However, about 30 miles ahead of the cold front, discrete supercell thunderstorms formed. (Supercells are rotating storms that give rise to the most violent tornadoes.) Discrete storms are best for tornadoes in favorable environments because there are no nearby thunderstorms that disrupt tornado formation processes due to storm collisions. So the conditions were exactly right for very violent tornadoes to form.

Condra and Loveland reported the low pressure center reached a surface low pressure of 991 millibars. That is pretty intense. They also reported that the cloud level was low with the tornadoes. When the relative humidity is high—as it was here (78 percent) and you lift the air, it makes a cloud at a lower base. We know from modern research that low cloud base is one of the key ingredients to making violent tornadoes. So that observation was an important detail.

Kuchera’s redrawn map of tracks and timing of five of the major tornadoes in the Great Easter 1913 outbreak in the Lincoln/Omaha area, superimposed on a modern map.

Note the southward progression with time in the order in which the tornadoes formed. This ties in neatly with the notion that there was an intersection between the cold front and the dry line: as the cold front swept south and overtook the dry line, their intersection moved farther south. That intersection was where lift was strongest for generating supercells and tornadoes, which would then move northeast. This process continued into northwest Missouri until about 8 PM that night, when the last F4 spun off. 

One last note: the tornado that devastated Omaha was not the strongest one in the family. Condra and Loveland noted “extreme energy” in the Yutan and Berlin (also called Otoe) tornadoes. The only reason those two especially intense tornadoes did not kill more people is that they went through sparsely populated rural areas.

Hopes for the future

I feel I understand this Great Easter 1913 tornado outbreak better than any modern event I’ve examined. All the brain power required to piece together all these puzzle pieces created in my mind a 3D conceptual model of what was actually going on—really surprising, given that it’s a hundred years old and the data are really sparse. Nonetheless, I feel pretty confident that what I’m laying out here is what really happened. Hopefully we can learn from it for future events. 

[This research blog installment represents only the first half of Kuchera’s presentation, covering his hand analysis. He and several colleagues also ran the 1913 tornado data through a major computational tool called the Twentieth-Century Reanalysis Project (20CR) On U.S. Department of Energy supercomputers. 20CR was developed in the last decade by NOAA and various U.S. and international partner agencies to elucidate long-term relationships between weather and climate. However, it also enables today’s meteorologists to use historic surface measurements of atmospheric pressure to reconstruct probable conditions in the atmosphere aloft, thereby gaining insight as to the possible physical causes of historic extreme weather events (see the use of 20CR by Cleveland National Weather Center senior hydrologist Sarah Jamison in reconstructing the events leading up to the 1913 flood in "Be Very Afraid..."). Kuchera and his colleagues intend to prepare their computational work in reconstructing the Great Easter 1913 tornadoes work for scientific publication; the results of this computational modeling will be summarized as a later post at an appropriate time. – T.E.B.]

About the Author

Department of Defense meteorologist Evan Kuchera at his station at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska. Credit: Trudy E. Bell

Evan Kuchera, a life-long resident of Nebraska, has always been fascinated by the severe weather that strikes each spring and summer, leading to his choice of a career in meteorology by attaining an MS from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. His current job as DOD meteorologist is to utilize numerical weather modeling to provide forecast information for the needs of the US Air Force as part of the 16^th Weather Squadron in the 557^th Weather Wing.

Next time: Men of the Hour

Selected references

Descriptions of the entire family of Easter 1913 tornadoes can be found in Bell, Trudy E., “The Devastating Nebraska–Iowa–Missouri Tornadoes of 1913:Harbingers of the U.S.’s Now-Forgotten Most Widespread Natural Disaster,” unpublished research paper presented at the 2007 Missouri Valley History Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. It cites specific newspaper accounts as evidence for the tornadoes being more numerous, more destructive, and more lethal than official figures suggest. Included is a discussion why newspaper reporters, railroad personnel, and farmers would have been reliable and credible observers for tracing additional damage and inferring the full extent of the supercell storm system.

Fujita scale circle diagram Credit: timesonline

Background about violence of tornadoes is at this NOAA page. The Fujita scale circle diagram at left may also help visualize the damage wreaked by tornadoes,

The concept of weather fronts being leading edges of air masses of different temperature and humidity--a concept fundamental to modern meteorology--was not described until 1919, and took a couple of decades to be widely accepted.

Condra, G.E., and G.A. Loveland, “The Iowa-Nebraska Tornadoes of Easter Sunday, 1913,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 46(2): 100–107, 1914.

Grazulis, Thomas P., Significant Tornadoes, 1880-1989. St. Johnsbury, VT: Environmental Films, 1991. Classic and fascinating two-volume reference detailing virtually every U.S. tornado F2 and greater for more than a century. Grazulis now runs The Tornado Project.

Information about metropolitan statistical areas used by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Office of Management and Budget, and other organizations is here and here. A map of the Omaha-Council Bluffs-Fremont combined statistical area is here.

A hand analysis of the Great Easter 1913 F4 tornado—separate from the Nebraska-Iowa-Missouri family—that devastated Terre Haute, Indiana after 9 PM that same night, see “Terror in Terre Haute.” 

Various Nebraska centennial commemorations are recounted in “Happy 1913Centennial Year!” (January 6, 2013); “1913 Great Easter Disaster Centennial Update” (February 2); “Centennial Month! Events Update” (March 3); “Centennial Update: April through December” (April 13), and "1913 Easter National Calamity: Centennial Highlights--and Legacy" (January 1, 2014).

For how Cleveland-based U.S. National Weather Service hydrologist Sarah Jamison used 20CR to reconstruct the meteorology leading up to the Great Easter 1913 flood in Ohio and Indiana, see “Be Very Afraid…”.

Bell, Trudy E., The Great Dayton Flood of 1913, Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Picture book of nearly 200 images of the flood in Dayton, rescue efforts, recovery, and the construction of the Miami Conservancy District dry dams for flood control, including several pictures of Cox. (Author’s shameless marketing plug: Copies are available directly from me for the cover price of $21.99 plus $4.00 shipping, complete with inscription of your choice; for details, e-mail me), or order from the publisher.

Terror in Terre Haute

The violent tornado that ripped through southern Terre Haute, Indiana, on Easter night, March 23,1913, may have been more than one twister, and its full path of destruction extended over 25 miles

Lightning crashes repeatedly, luridly lighting the parlor where John Hanley and his family were trying their best to ignore the violent thunderstorm and enjoy being together the rainy night of Easter Sunday 1913. Then around 9:45 PM, over booming thunder and howling winds and drumming rain, Hanley hears a growing roar of what 

Oil painting, possibly of the Terre Haute tornado, was featured as the cover of a leaflet by the New York Underwriters Agency advertising tornado insurance. The unidentified location may have been of a rural area southwest or northeast of Terre Haute itself. If so, artistic license is liberal. The actual tornado struck not in sunlight but well after dark—nearly 10 PM Easter night—in the midst of horrific lightning and torrential downpour, and very likely people were not running across farm fields so near it. Credit: Ray Thomas collection of postcards on the 1913 flood 

sounds like a fast-approaching express train. He opens the front door—and beholds a towering tornado just blocks away, bearing down in his direction and sweeping up whole houses in its fury.

No time to run for the storm cellar—. Yelling he knows not what, Hanley gathers his family around him in the small hall to huddle behind the strong front door and its protective outer storm door. Seconds later, heavy timbers fly through the parlor window and across the room in a cascade of shattering glass. In moments, the beautiful home is wrecked, along with Hanley’s three-story warehouse of awnings and construction materials behind it. Had the family remained seated in the parlor, all five would have been killed.

The destroyed Hanley house likely looked something like the Dix house, shown here, the morning after the tornado roared through Terre Haute. Credit: Terre Haute’s Tornado and Flood Disaster, Wabash Valley Visions and Voices

In less than two minutes, the tornado roars across southern Terre Haute, Indiana, destroying some 250 homes, ruining businesses and livelihoods, and killing a score of friends and neighbors and maiming hundreds more. Along the path of destruction—which varies from 100 to 500 yards wide—fires ignite as crossed electrical wires short, gas lines burst, and glowing coals from overturned kitchen and bedroom stoves that cold  night scatter onto carpets, bedding, and curtains. Through the torrential downpour falling on the ruins of human lives rise wails of agony and mourning. 

Wide-angle view of a few blocks of destruction a day or so after the Terre Haute tornado. Note that many people had umbrellas, as heavy rains were continuing, and in the next day or two flooding was widespread. Credit: New York Underwriters Agency advertising leaflet in Ray Thomas collection of postcards on the 1913 flood 

 

Reconstructing Terre Haute’s disaster

One long-standing mystery to me has been the fact that today the Terre Haute tornado is remembered just for striking one portion of one city, as if it touched down there and nowhere else. Moreover, text references to it both then and now as “the Terre Haute tornado” imply the assumption that it acted completely alone. Yet, violent tornadoes are more typically part of a larger rotating regional-scale supercell thunderstorm system that tends to generate multiple tornadoes—as indeed happened four hours earlier that same night Easter Sunday, 1913 in Omaha, Council Bluffs, and elsewhere across Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri (see “‘My Conception of Hell’”). And as strong vortices, they also tend to persist along paths miles long. 

The Terre Haute tornado destroyed the factory buildings of the Root Glass Works, but did not destroy the company itself, which two years later (1915) went on to design and patent the iconic Coca Cola bottle, this year celebrating its centennial. Credit: Engineering News

So for years, my big questions were: did the Terre Haute tornado indeed act alone? And what was the full extent of its path of destruction? To research those questions, a year ago (April 2014), I photocopied articles on the Terre Haute tornado from microfilmed pages of 10 local 1913 newspapers in Vigo and surrounding counties housed at the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis.

The path of the Terre Haute tornado never was mapped either at the time or later—or if it was, such a map seems never to have been published in local newspapers or in Monthly Weather Review, the official journal of the U.S. Weather Bureau. But the commemorative booklet Terre Haute’s Tornado and Flood Disaster, March twenty-three to thirtieth, nineteen hundred and thirteen issued by the Terre Haute Publishing Co. and heavily relying on newspaper accounts and photographs, compiled many individual stories—many of which include names and street addresses of victims and of buildings destroyed.

Cover of the commemorative booklet Terre Haute’s Tornado and Flood Disaster, March twenty-three to thirtieth, nineteen hundred and thirteen issued by the Terre Haute Publishing Co. Street addresses in this booklet allowed me to plot the destruction of the tornado through Terre Haute. Credit: Wabash Valley Visions and Voices

So with the aid of Google Maps, I spent an entire day plotting scores of 1913 addresses on a modern map of Terre Haute to see what emerged.

Map of the southern half of today’s city of Terre Haute, plotting the location of damage by address given in the 1913 commemorative booklet Terre Haute’s Tornado and Flood Disaster. Credit: base map Google Maps; 1913 tornado damage plot Trudy E. Bell

 

Several revelations emerged. First, the city of Terre Haute in 1910 was Boomtown, USA. It had almost the same population as it does today: over 58,000 compared to 61,000, making it then one of the nation’s top 100 populous cities. It was also growing fast, Even so, its city limits were smaller and surrounded by fields and farmland instead of urban sprawl and suburbs (today Terre Haute’s entire statistical metropolitan area encompasses over 170,000 people). 

Second, street numbering and names today must differ on some streets. Google Maps could not plot any of the addresses in the booklet given for Lockport Road, so those data are missing from my map. Neighborhoods must have also changed names. For example, the booklet states that tornado damage was particularly bad in Krumbhaar Place, “the new sub-division recently opened on the south side of the city”; I could find no subdivision with that name today, just a single Krumbhaar Street in what might be the approximate area. Another hard-hit area I could not find was Gardentown (also spelled Garden Town), apparently an unincorporated community six or eight miles south of the city just north of Prairieton and largely devoted to truck farming for fruit and vegetables and greenhouses for florists. Appeal to readers: If you know more about the historical geography of Terre Haute, please contact me.

Another general view of tornado destruction in the Terre Haute. Credit: Terre Haute’s Tornado and Flood Disaster, Wabash Valley Visions and Voices

Third, it is clear from the booklet’s text that several newspaper reporters or other authors sought to be as thorough as possible, clearly visiting hospitals and walking along ruined streets. But the accounts are jumpy in geography and some of the anonymous writers were more complete than others in specifying locations.

Nonetheless, the map I was able to construct of the tornado’s path of destruction through Terre Haute reveals tantalizing structure. Are the variations in width due to actual variation in width of the tornado’s funnel of destruction, or merely incompleteness or limitations in data gathered or published? Do separations in areas of destruction reveal that the tornado hopped along its path, or did it just pass through what were open fields in 1913 until encountering another group of buildings?

And could it have been a multiple-vortex tornado with several small, short-lived smaller subvortices that orbit around the main funnel: subvortices that actually deal some of the worst death and destruction? 

Multiple-vortex tornado with half a dozen small, short-lived, but exceptionally violent subvortices, photographed near Altus, OK on May 11, 1982. Credit: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

 

A 2013 article by Mike McCormick for the Terre Haute Tribune-Star written for the centennial of the Terre Haute tornado describes it as a “multi-funneled tornado” shortly before 11 PM. But the article cites no reference for either the time—which is clearly documented as 9:45 PM in Monthly Weather Review and elsewhere—or the assertion about multiple funnels. 

McCormick also writes that “According to several witnesses, the storm cloud divided. One section, containing two shafts [sic], headed east between Hulman and Washington streets. The other went northeast, killing Dr. Mahlon Moore at his office at 629 College Ave.” I plotted McCormick’s locations on my map in blue (to distinguish them from the locations cited in the booklet). However, I have not yet found any 1913 primary source for his statements, although the commemorative booklet does show a photograph of Moore’s devastated office (with no address). 

Ruins of office of Dr. Mahlon Moore; if the address given by Mike McCormick is correct, might Moore have been killed by a subvortex? Credit: Credit: Terre Haute’s Tornado and Flood Disaster, Wabash Valley Visions and Voices 

But if McCormick is right about the location of Moore’s office, that would be strong evidence for another vortex some distance from the main funnel. Moreover, I wonder whether the patches isolated damage removed from the main path of my map suggests the possibility of damage from subvortices, which last only a few seconds but are exceptionally destructive.

The map of the destruction I compiled from the booklet, plus the booklet’s stated variations in the width of destruction, is tantalizingly suggestive of the cycloidal marks carved into farm fields from multiple-vortex tornadoes.  

Cycloidal marks in farm fields left by a multiple-vortex tornado. Credit: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

25+mile path

Both the booklet and local newspapers published immediately afterwards in and around Vigo County and in Indianapolis clearly describe additional tornado destruction in and north of Prairieton—a town of about 700 population 8 to 10 miles southwest of Terre Haute. The Brazil Daily Times and The Crawfordsville Journal also detailed damage in Perth, an even smaller town (400 population) about 20 miles northeast of Terre Haute, as well as in Glenn and East Glenn, the western part of Seelyville, and Ehrmandale in between. The northeasternmost report of damage was a mile and a half west of Carbon. 

Plotting those areas on a broader-area map suggests that the path of the Terre Haute tornado could have been 25 to 30 miles long, as the paths line up nicely. There is also the possibility of the three areas of destruction being wreaked by different twisters, but almost no newspaper accounts indicate the time locations were hit, which would be essential in sorting out the truth. 

Map of tornado damage in various locations reported in half a dozen local newspapers reveals that the path of the Terre Haute tornado was at least 25 miles long. Credit: base map Google Maps; 1913 tornado damage plot Trudy E. Bell

Plotting specific locations on the streets of Prairieton, Seelyville, and Perth was almost impossible: in such small communities, clearly everyone knew everyone else and local landmarks, so destruction is described only by giving the owners’ names without street addresses or just the names of local parks long gone. That makes it almost impossible for someone a century later without detailed knowledge of local history or access to public records of property ownership to map the extent of damage. Again, I welcome contact from any reader who can help.

Why was more information not preserved about the path and timing of the Terre Haute tornado? Reporters in Omaha and Council Bluffs and elsewhere did history a huge service in preserving a very detailed and thorough record of the family of 10+ tornadoes that struck Easter night 1913. Why is the record sketchier in Indiana?

Ruins of Olson house. Note umbrellas, as it was raining hard and flooding followed a couple of days later. Credit: Credit: Terre Haute’s Tornado and Flood Disaster, Wabash Valley Visions and Voices

The answer dawned when I was photocopying the newspapers on microfilm in the Indiana State Library: tragically, the city of Terre Haute was unique in suffering both violent tornado damage (like Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri) and record flooding (like Ohio and other states) in the Great Easter 1913 storm system. Indeed, Indiana, like Ohio, was at the epicenter of the 1913 flood. On Easter Sunday, rain in Terre Haute was already heavy, and floodwaters began overflowing river banks the next day. Not only did record-high floodwaters confront Terre Haute residents with more urgent worries than tracing a tornado’s path through the open countryside, but also nature itself was immediately obliterating that very evidence. 

Death undercount

Published death counts for the Terre Haute tornado range from 17 to 21. Seventeen—the number given in the booklet—is a clear fact-checking error and significant undercount: simply cross-checking the names of fatalities described in the booklet’s text with the names given in “Toll of the Tornado” reveals the omission of at least three people whose bodies were discovered: Mrs. Moses Carter and Mrs. Leonard Sloan and her day-old infant. Also, The Crawfordsville Journal reported “one or more” people killed in Prairieton. So the verified minimum is no fewer than 20 killed, and perhaps closer to 23.

And of course, as discussed already in a detailed analysis of fatalities during the Great Easter 1913 storm system and flood (see “‘Death Rode Ruthless…’” ), people injured by the Terre Haute tornado could have died weeks or even months later of complications and thus not have been counted as tornado deaths at the time the booklet was published.

© 2015 Trudy E. Bell

Next time: Never Before Seen

Selected references

Special thanks go to Ray Thomas for high-resolution scans of the New York Underwriters Agency leaflet and permission to use images from his amazing website of postcards from the 1913 flood. 

In addition to the sources already cited in the text, these also proved especially useful:

“Big Storm Passes West of Brazil” and “Damage Near Carbon,” both in The Brazil Daily Times, March 25, 1913, p. 1.

Edwards, Roger, “The Online Tornado FAQ,” U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 

 

Grazulis, Thomas P., Significant Tornadoes, 1880-1989. St. Johnsbury, VT: Environmental Films, 1991. Classic and fascinating two-volume reference detailing virtually every U.S. tornado F2 and greater for more than a century. Grazulis now runs The Tornado Project.

“Perth in Path of Disastrous Storm” The Brazil Daily Times, March 24, 1913, p. 1.

Shannon, Charles W., “Soil Survey of Clay, Knox, Sullivan and Vigo Counties, Indiana,” Thirty-Sixth Annual Report of Department of Geology and Natural Resources, Indiana 1911, Indianapolis, 1912, pp. 137–280. Brief description of Garden Town is on page 275.

 “Tornado and Flood Damage at Terre Haute, Ind.,” Engineering News 68(15): 738–739, April 10, 1913.

“Tornado at Terre Haute, Ind., March 23, 1913,” Monthly Weather Review 41(3): 483–484, March 1913.

Bell, Trudy E., The Great Dayton Flood of 1913, Arcadia Publishing, 2008. Picture book of nearly 200 images of the flood in Dayton, rescue efforts, recovery, and the construction of the Miami Conservancy District dry dams for flood control, including several pictures of Cox. (Author’s shameless marketing plug: Copies are available directly from me for the cover price of $21.99 plus $4.00 shipping, complete with inscription of your choice; for details, e-mail me), or order from the publisher.