A Fujita Tornado Strikes the High Plains

Your thunder roared from the whirlwind;the lightning lit up the world!



this F5'er out of west Texas (not pictured) represents not only one of the top ten most powerfully known tornados in history but was also used to model the Fujita Scale after and is a must know for all whirlwind enthusiasts

Lubbock, Texas May 11, 1970

At 6PM, large cumulus clouds began to appear in the area, and at 6:30 the first echoes indicating thunderstorms began to appear on radar scopes in nearby Amarillo. Less than half an hour later, Lubbock radar indicated the first thunderstorm activity in the immediate Lubbock vicinity: a moderate storm just south of the city near the small farming community of Woodrow..At about 9:35PM, a second and much more significant tornado touched down near the campus of Texas Tech University, and began to track northeast, carving a path of destruction that at its peak reached almost two miles in width right through the heart of the city..One boy lost his life when he was sucked out of the car he was riding in.. The devastating twister tore through several densely populated residential areas before slicing through downtown, dealing a direct blow to the First National Bank building and the Great Plains Life building.. In spite of the severity of the damage and amid cries to demolish, the owners chose to repair it instead, and it still stands; this building is believed to be the tallest building to survive a direct hit from an F5 tornado...you can still see the repair as you drive by which is shaped in the traditional image en.wikipedia.org...

"There is no doubt in anybody's mind around here," said a veteran newspaperman, "that it is one of the biggest and most prolonged, tornadoes ever to strike Texas."..The width of the destruction was the greatest tornado observers could remember. A newspaper executive touring the downtown area shook his head and called it a "nightmare." Others looked at the severe damage and muttered, "incredible." The storm left a path of destruction eight miles long. The blitz winds drilled to earth near the campus of Texas Technological University than sprang along an eight-mile route to the heart of the city where it virtually destroyed scores of buildings, sending glass shrapnel raining over the streets. Concrete slabs were ripped from buildings and were slammed into cars and other buildings.At about 4:40 a.m., police said they expected the 21-story Great Plains building to fall "any minute." www3.gendisasters.com...

The scale was introduced in 1971 by Tetsuya Fujita of the University of Chicago who developed the scale together with Allen Pearson (path length and width additions in 1973), head of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center (predecessor to the Storm Prediction Center) in Kansas City, Missouri. The scale was applied retroactively to tornado reports from 1950 onward for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Tornado Database in the United States, and occasionally to earlier infamous tornadoes.. it was superseded in 2007 by the Enhanced Fujita Scale in the United States en.wikipedia.org...

His way is in whirlwind and storm,
and the clouds are the dust of his feet.