Major Events
A major milestone in weather history, 1950 marks the first public tornado warning and use of radar to track storms. With this, tornado records began to be kept and a database was started.
1950 had an early and violent start to the year with the first tornadoes touching down on January 3. Two F3's and one F1 touched down. The first tornado, and most damaging, was an F3 which struck St. Louis, Missouri causing almost $3 million in damages. The second F3 struck Fillmore, Illinois causing $250,000 in damages. The last tornado was a brief F1 in northeastern Ohio.
The first killer tornado of 1950 was a lone F3 on January 13 which struck Polk County, Arkansas. One person was killed and another was injured.
A rare F2 tornado touched down in northeastern Illinois on January 26. This is one of only two tornadoes to hit that area in the month of January. The other being an EF3 on January 7, 2008.
A deadly outbreak occurred between February 11 and 13 across the southern United States. 19 tornadoes touched down including an F4 which left 18 people dead along a 82.6 mile long track in Louisiana on February 12. There were 8 killer tornadoes, 6 of which were on February 12, which left 37 people dead. Two other long track tornadoes touched down in Louisiana, and F3 which tracked 74.5 miles leaving 5 dead, and an F2 which traveled 58.4 miles and left another 5 dead.
Read more about this topic: List Of US Tornadoes Of 1950
Famous quotes containing the words major and/or events:
“I have not had major experience of talking with people once pronounced brain-dead, but I think we could be safe in saying he did not have great zip.”
—Sir Howard Smith (b. 1919)
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)