April 10, 1979 Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak

All pictures and graphics courtesy the NWS Office in Norman, Oklahoma.

Above you can see the overview map of the Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak of April 10, 1979. This outbreak is significant to me mainly because I was not quite 1 year old when one of the tornadoes struck Wichita Falls, TX that afternoon. My mother has told me many times about how terrible and frightening this storm was when it came barreling into the city of Wichita Falls. She recounts that it appeared as though the sky had descended to the ground and was scraping through the city. Indeed, the tornado was quite wide and did F4 damage throughout most of the city of Wichita Falls. This outbreak is significant to me, also, because it is the single event in my life that has ignited my passion for meteorology and driven me to become a storm chaser.

Overall, there were about 30 tornadoes, total that touched down and wreaked havoc throughout the upper Red River Valley that day. Below I have linked pages to the NWS site dedicated to the study of this outbreak. I encourage everyone who may be interested to read them, as I feel a lot can be learned from the study, even today. Plus, I will only highlight just a few things about the actual Wichita Falls storm and paste a few pictures. A much deeper and more thorough insight can be had be reading the entire study found here: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/wxevents/19790410/

Here is an excerpt from the synopsis/discussion page of the site, talking about the Wichita Falls supercell:

The Wichita Falls storm produced its first tornado at 1653 CST (4:53 PM) near Seymour, TX. The storm’s second tornado, the terrible Wichita Falls tornado, formed at 1755 CST (5:55 PM) to the southwest of the city and moved through the southern and eastern sides of Wichita Falls shortly after 1800 CST (6:00 PM). The tornado finally ended near Waurika, OK after traveling 47 miles. The Wichita Falls storm produced a third and final tornado about 2000 CST (8:00 PM) near Pruitt, OK

The synopsis/discussion page can be found here: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/wxevents/19790410/burgess.php

Below is a satellite image of the Wichita Falls storm. This image was taken at 0z, which was 6 PM CST.

Here is another, more extensive excerpt from the synopsis/discussion page:

The Wichita Falls storm formed north of Abilene, TX. It generally moved to the northeast, but turned to the right along the middle of its path, the period during which it produced its violent tornado. During its life, radar-derived storm tops exceeded 50,000 feet and reflectivities were higher than 50 dBZ. It is interesting to note that the Seymour and Wichita Falls tornadoes both formed during periods of relative decline in storm-top height and reflectivity values, a characteristic that has been noted for a number of supercell storms that have produced several cycles of tornadoes. In particular, note the sharp decline in reflectivity near the genesis time and during the life of the Wichita Falls tornado with maximum values less than 45 dBZ for a brief period. During this period, large hail was occurring in the central and northern portions of Wichita Falls as the tornado devastated the southern portion of the city. No explanation for the unusually low reflectivity values with that phase of the storm (sensed by several radars) has been developed.

The Norman Doppler radar was used to collect dense data (0.5o azimuth spacing and 150 meter gate spacing) on the Wichita Falls storm during the interval leading to the formation of the violent tornado. At 1730 CST (5:30 PM), a core of greater than 50 dBZ and two mesocyclones were seen with the storm. The northeastern mesocyclone in the mesocyclone pair was the occluding parent circulation of the Seymour tornado while the southwestern mesocyclone in the pair was the developing parent circulation of the Wichita Falls tornado. By 1800 CST (6:00 PM), the storm had taken on a very classic supercell look with the tornado-associated mesocyclone and hook echo in the right rear portion of the echo. Note that the 50 dBZ core was no longer evident.

Above is a view looking southwest near Memorial Stadium in Wichita Falls, Texas at the time of tornado touchdown. McNiel Junior High School is shown in the middle left of this photo. The school building was totally destroyed by the tornado.

Above is a view looking north from the south shore of Lake Wichita at the tornado approaching Wichita Falls, Texas. The tornado has widened and intensified at this stage.

The following excerpt is from the Wichita Falls tornado photographs page:

After the tornado left Wichita Falls and travelled northeast, it entered Clay County and changed its appearance. The tornado became multi-vortex, displaying as many as five satellite vortices rotating around the center of circulation. In this stage, the tornado did extensive damage just south of Dean and near Byars, destroying a large number of rural homes, but causing no more fatalities.

Below is a picture showing the tornado and several satellite vortices. I will note here that this aspect of this tornado is what has continued to interest me the most about the outbreak. In my personal, directed studies over the past few years, I have noticed that most, if not all, strong and violent tornadoes are accompanied by satellite vortices. This is something that I feel bears further investigation.

I will end this post with the following, final excerpt from the synopsis/discussion page. It goes without saying that the April 10, 1979 Red River Tornado Outbreak is a significant event and one that has provided multitudes of great information about severe storms and tornadoes.

Lessons to be Learned from the Wichita Falls Tornado

1. Tornado warning and preparedness systems are worth the time and effort it takes to maintain them. All who have looked at and studied the event agree that the death toll would have been much larger had there not been not been such systems in place and functioning on April 10.

2. Vehicles (cars, pickups, and trucks) are poor protection and should be avoided during tornado situations in larger cities where travel is congested and tornado escape routes are not readily available and open for use. The majority of the fatalities were in vehicles, and a number of those victims left homes that were undamaged by the tornado only to be caught in its deadly path as they tried to flee.

3. Well-built modern houses, in general, offer fairly good protection from tornadoes. Some or all of the walls remained for well-built homes (photos 4-6 on the Wichita Falls damage page) and bathrooms in particular provided good protection. Although roughly 4,000 homes were struck by the tornado, there were only five fatalities of people inside homes along the path of the tornado. Many of the 1,800 injured, however, were in homes. This means that those people who moved to the center part of their houses, got down low, and covered themselves, by-in-large escaped with their lives, sustaining injuries instead of death.

4. Even though lesson #3 (above) is true in a violent tornado, the only complete guarantee of safety comes from an underground shelter, an above-ground shelter, or an extremely strongly-built building. McNiel Junior High, a new concrete/steel-reinforced building was not built well enough to provide safe shelter from the tornado. The Southwest National Bank Building was totally destroyed except for its concrete vault, a proxy for an above-ground shelter.

5. As bad as the tornado was, it could have been worse. If McNiel Junior High had been fully occupied by students and teachers at the time of the tornado, there would have been hundreds of additional casualties and many more deaths. Very large groups of people gathered in tornado-vulnerable places, such as schools, stadiums (such as Memorial Stadium), and outdoor events, are disasters waiting to happen. Every year in the United States the threat of a catastrophe looms whenever tornadoes approach large gatherings of people. Fortunately, on April 10, 1979, McNiel Junior High was almost totally unoccupied when the tornado struck and a worse catastrophe was avoided.

Thank you to the NWS Norman, OK Office for their thorough investigation and study of this amazing tornado outbreak, and thank you to all my readers out there who have taken the time to read about this event that has greatly impacted my life in more ways than one.