Oklahoma Tornadoes

by Jerry Blackerby

Oklahoma and tornadoes; the two words seem to go together. Mom and Dad lived in southwestern Oklahoma when I came home from the Navy in 1955. Dad was the pastor of a small, rural Baptist church near Snyder, Oklahoma. The girl that I later married and her family were members of Dad’s church and sharecropped near Mom and Dad. Snyder is located between Lawton and Altus and was the site of one of the deadliest tornado disasters in Oklahoma history. On May 10, 1905, 97 people were killed and 150 injured when a monstrous funnel dipped out of the sky at 6:45 p.m. The tornado path was about 800 feet wide and 40 miles long. In Snyder, 100 homes were leveled, 150 more badly damaged. This area of Oklahoma became known as Tornado Alley.

The people in this area lived in almost total fear of tornadoes in the 1950s, since there was not an adequate warning system. Many people watched the nightly news and weather and went to the cellar to sleep. They were afraid they would not have enough warning to get to the cellar if they tried to sleep in the house. Some of Dad’s church members slept many nights in a cellar during the storm season.

The best tornado warning system in Oklahoma during the 1950s was the Ham radio operators. A network of Ham radio operators worked with the weather department at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. Since I was a Ham operator, I helped with this effort. At that time, none of us had special training to be “Storm Chasers.” This was a new experience for me, although I grew up in west Texas and had seen a couple of tornadoes; I had seen nothing like I saw in this area. Each season, we saw several tornadoes, although very few damaged property or injured people. There was one other Ham operator in Snyder that I worked with. One of us would stay on the base station and the other would go out in a car. Our low-power mobile radios could not reach the Hams in Norman reliably, but the base radio could. If we saw a tornado near Snyder, we also called the local volunteer fire department. The person on duty would sound the siren alarm to warn the residents of Snyder.

A couple of weeks before I got married in 1955, I was home with my little brother and sister one afternoon. Large clouds were rolling in as a storm neared. In southwestern Oklahoma, if it gets very quite and still as a storm nears, the conditions are ripe for a tornado.

It was deathly quite. We could hear a tractor across the field at a neighbor’s as if it was in the yard and it was becoming dark from the clouds. I decided to take my brother and sister to the cellar. Although I normally do not run to a cellar, it seemed like the thing to do under the circumstances. As I opened the screen door at the back of the house a strong wind ripped the door out of my hand and I began hearing a loud roar. I put my brother and sister under the kitchen table and knelt down with them. The wind blew hard and the rain came down heavy for a few minutes. Suddenly, the wind died down and the rain slackened off.

I took my brother and sister to the cellar and saw limbs and debris all over the yard. I made sure my brother and sister were safe in the cellar and looked around and saw that my Ham radio antenna was down. The house did not show any damage so I did not know exactly what had happened. A neighbor, one of Dad’s church deacons, told us that he saw a tornado touch down in the field southwest of us. As the tornado neared the house, it lifted and rolled across the top of the trees and the house horizontally. It touched the ground again across the road and continued northeastward for a short distance before lifting into the clouds again. God spared us that day.

After our first child was born, I went to Mom and Dad’s for the night. I went to sleep on the couch, since I had been awake for most of the preceding three days. When Mom and Dad came home about 9, they made me go to bed in the back bedroom. An hour later, Dad woke me to go to the cellar because a storm was brewing. I told him to go without me because I was staying in the bed. A little later Dad came in and insisted that I join them in the cellar. There was one double bed in the cellar and my three sisters and brother were already on the bed, but made room for me. When it began raining hard, one spot in the cellar started leaking and that drip was right over me. I could not sleep.

About that time, Dad saw, during lightning flashes, what appeared to be a funnel dipping down from the clouds near us and asked me to see what I thought. I saw what appeared to be a tornado that could possibly hit the town of Snyder as it progressed northeastward. Since I was active on the Ham radio storm warning net, I went in the house to the telephone and called the fire department in town. They blew the siren to alert the residents of a possible tornado, although it did not hit the town of Snyder that night.

After making the call, I went to the bedroom and crawled into bed. Dad came in a few minutes later and fussed at me for not coming back to the cellar. He said, “God gave us sense enough to take shelter when necessary.” I told him, “If God wants me tonight He can have me because I am staying in this bed.”

Again the Lord took care of us. There were not any more tornadoes that night.