Tornado

It was an unusually warm day in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. A warm breeze blowing up from the south had raised the temperature to 60DEG-75DEG. A cold wind was approaching from the northwest. Any meteorologist could have predicted that a storm was due-- but none predicted what took place. Shortly after noon, Death came from the skies. It struck first in Missouri, touched Biehle and Annapolis, hurdled the Mississippi River into Illinois, in the unaccountable way of such storms, and struck about five miles inland at Murphysboro. For the next 30 miles, it seems to have swept on most fiercely through De Soto, Bush, West Frankfort, Parrish, passing about five miles north of Herrin. Then it seems to have stopped again, 20 or 30 miles to McLeansboro and Carmi, crossed the Wabash River into Indiana, promptly demolishing Griffin and razing half of Princeton. Apparently this was done by one tornado or a recurrent one, because the path of the storm is a mathematically straight line on the map. Subsidiary storms invaded Tennessee and Kentucky, not without death and destruction.

In all, the dead numbered some 800, the injured almost 3,000 and those made homeless nearly 10,000. The customary freaks of nature were evident. Roofs were torn from houses, half-houses torn away from their mates. Some well-constructed buildings were wrenched from among weaker neighbors and destroyed. Men and property were wafted into the air and deposited at a distance. Small objects, such as letters and tax receipts, were found miles from their sources.

From Murphysboro to Parrish, little remained in the track of the tornado. .Parrish was completely wiped out. Murphysboro, a town of about 11,000, was more than half destroyed. Several schools, filled with children, were wrecked with heavy loss of life. Fire succeeded the storm in many places; and, still later, gangrene set in among the wounded.

The effects of the storm were felt by miners 500 feet below the surface. The tales of the survivors on the surface were pitiful. One, that of a laborer who was traveling in an automobile and jumped out when he saw the storm coming, is an example:

"The machine turned over a couple of times and I never saw it again. I walked the rest of the way to my home, a mile and a half. The place was a complete wreck. I found my daughter-in-law sitting up, dazed, and she died while I tried to talk to her. Her two daughters were 25 feet away, dead. My wife and mother were there, too, dead. Nearby was my 21-year-old-son, Fred. He was dead. Near him was my daughter Margaret. She was 16 two days ago and she was dead. My other daughter, at school, was the only one saved. I was only scratched."

In a general way, the physical causes of such catastrophes are scientifically known, but the exact conditions under which they arise are not known or predictable. They occur only in two parts of the world--or, at least, are very extraordinary elsewhere. The Mississippi Valley and Southeastern Europe are their habitats.

They come about when a layer of warm air occurs under a layer of cold. The warm air ascends in a spiral, spreading out as it goes up. In the rising warm air, moisture is condensed from the top down, so that the funnel-shaped cloud appears to descend. This funnel-shaped cloud is the chief phenomenon for observation as the storm passes. It is described as resembling the trunk of an elephant or a rope dangling from the clouds overhead. Its path along the ground is comparatively narrow, but it has a great raising force, for all the air is ascending. The low air pressure created near the ground frequently causes buildings to collapse outward, the walls being pushed out by greater pressure within.

In the case of the recent storm, the most considerable in many years, there was 1) a warm southerly wind blowing most of the day, 2) a cold wind coming down from the northwest. The northeasterly direction of the storm fully accords with the direction of these winds, the tornado moving along the line of contact between the warm and cold winds. With the winds described, the point of contact, first taking place in Missouri, would move rapidly northeast.