WEATHER: Tornado Junction

• Share

It was all too familiar: the dead air, the unnatural darkness, the faint smell of dust. People in Woodward and the other towns of the pan-flat Oklahoma-Texas wheat belt (which lost over 150 citizens in the disastrous twister of April 9) shivered when they saw the new storm coming last week. They assumed that they were still on the main line and dived for storm cellars. They were understandably hasty—the twister struck 40 miles south in tiny Leedey, tore it apart and killed six.

Then the weather around the tornado junction of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas quieted down for a while. But the next day the great, hedgehopping twister was on the go again. This time it struck in the small plantation communities 40 miles south of Little Rock, Ark. (pop. 88,000), cut a 20-mile swath of freakish destruction, destroyed over 1,000 houses and other buildings, killed 34 people. While rescuers searched the wreckage for more bodies, they kept a wary eye on the western horizon.