Local Tornadoes I Have Known

It was good to hear Eureka citizens now have the ability to have an early warning system when in danger of being hit by a tornado.

The first tornado I remember was in the early 1930s and mostly involved barns and houses in the downtown area of Eureka, between the railroad tracks on the east along with the Claffey House, now a part of the complex.

At that time, my family farmed the Augustine Farm, and our cattle were grazing in the field just south of old Times Beach.  They must have felt the circular motion of the wind as we could see them running in a large circular pattern, as we watched from the large lawn north of the rock house.  My parents had just been to Crescent, and on the way home, said the storm must have lifted over the top of the hill there and that trees were almost bent double over the road.

Much later the storm that blew through St. Louis, hitting the arena, the TV tower next door and GasLight Square had its beginning on West North Street in Eureka, just two doors east of where I live now.  Someone had just remodeled the Jacob House with large front post holding the roof.  The roof section lifted and went onto the house roof.

From there, the storm went across the river, wiping out some barns and rearranging others until it lifted and came down again farther east until it hit St. Louis.

The great tornado of 1896 was observed by my mother who saw it from Highway 30 east of Fenton as it went into St. Louis. My late wife's mother had a different recollection, as she lived in the track of the storm, and her family was more or less wiped out and separated. Because of that she never saw her two brothers again.

So here comes the real kicker in that when I was a state representative in 1965, she told me about this and said maybe one of them lived in Osage County and his last name was O'Neal. 

The next week I talked with Helen Hardy, then the state rep from there and asked if she knew someone with that name, and she replied that she did and he had died recently.  We followed that lead and found the other brother lived in Henryetta, OK.  So we made contact, and in a few weeks, he came to visit a sister he hadn't seen in almost 70 years.

When I had a Piper Cub airplane in the mid-1950s, a tornado had gone through the Farmington, MO, area. I thought it would be great to see from the air, so I flew down and flew the path of the storm. It was a rather stormy day, much like we have been having recently, and on the way back to the farm, I hit a front coming through and since my Cub would only do 80 miles per hour, I seemed to be flying backwards coming over the hills from House Springs.

So much for tornadoes.  The damage from them will become worse as more land is developed.   Good luck to you.