1925: The Tri-State Tornado

1925: The Tri-State Tornado

Author: AccuWeather March 18, 2022 Duration: 1:56
This Date in Weather History
History
Early spring often brings the most violent weather to the nation’s midsection of the entire year. High in the atmosphere, up where the jet stream is, temperatures can still be almost as cold as they are in mid-winter, yet down on the ground temperatures can soar to at times close to summer-time levels. The extreme temperature contrast, that occurs at no other time of the year, combined with turning winds from the surface up into higher levels of the air leads to the formation of severe thunderstorms and multiple tornados. On March 18, 1925 perhaps the greatest severe weather event in the last two centuries was brewing. By the time the day was over what would be known as the Tristate tornado produced the single most devastating tornado ever. The tornado began near Ellington, Missouri and averaged 62 mph in forward speed as it moved northeastward. The tornado was 1 mile wide and was on the ground for 219 miles the longest continuous tornado path ever observed. 85 farms were destroyed near Owensville, Indiana, and the entire town of Griffin, Indiana, was totally destroyed. A total of 695 deaths were reported with 2,027 injured there alone from that single tornado alone. There was $16.5 million worth of damage or almost a quarter of a billion in 2021 dollars. 11 other tornadoes the same day killed 50 more elsewhere, including 33 at a school in Desoto, IL.

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Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

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This Date in Weather History
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1921: Cloudburst causes 10' of flooding in Pueblo, CO [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:14
What started out as just another day in June in Colorado in 1921, rapidly turned into one that would never be forgotten in the town of Pueblo, Colorado. A cloudburst enveloped the town the afternoon of June 3, 1921. Duri…
1889: Flooding of the Potomac River [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:12
On June 2, 1889, the same heavy rains caused that had helped cause massive flooding in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, overwhelmed the South Fork Dam several days before, hit the Washington, DC, area. Most of the roads in DC at…
1965: Tropical system causes 30k fatalities in Bangladesh [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:44
The World Health Organization reports that nation of Bangladesh is especially vulnerable to tropical cyclones, known as hurricanes near the United States, because of its location at the triangular shaped head of the Bay…
1889: The Johnstown Flood [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:06
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, lies hard against the Conemaugh River in its deep valley in the western part of the state. Founded in 1770, it grew quickly as the Civil War approached, fortunes were made in iron, coal and steel…
1879: The Real-life inspiration for "The Wizard of Oz" [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:13
On May 30, 1879 the town of Irving, Kansas in the northeastern part of the state was a growing farm community with several hundred residents. Today, though Irving is a ghost town. On May 30, 1879, two tornados destroyed…
1914: Empress of Ireland and Storstad ships collide [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:08
From 1900 until 1914 almost 100,000 passengers in ocean liners, crossed the Atlantic to Canada, mainly from Great Britain. The main port of entry and embarkation to and from Canada was Quebec City, on the St Lawrence Riv…
1880: 1' of rain falls in less than 2 hours in Brackettville, TX [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:24
Brackettville, the county seat of Kinney County in Texas, is on U.S. Highway 90 twenty-two miles northeast of the Rio Grande and 125 miles west of San Antonio. It is named after Oscar Brackett, who established the first…
2008: "Pneumonia Front" causes big temperature drops in Chicago [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:59
The term Pneumonia front, first coined by Milwaukee Weather Bureau Office in the 1960s, is used to describe a rare meteorological phenomenon observed on the western Lake Michigan shoreline during the warm season. These f…
1987: A fisherman is struck and killed by lightning [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:51
The number of people killed by lightning in recent years is a far cry from annual lightning deaths decades ago. In the 1940s, for instance, hundreds of people were killed each year by lightning. In 1943 alone, 432 people…

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