May 1957 storms any of you remember

[264killer]

I was 16 years old when a tornado tore part of the roof of the gymnasium & other damage in TUTTLE. They had National Guard patrolling the school. I was in the Guard they were going to come get me to be part of the guard. My class mates told officers the road to my house was so bad it would take a convoy to get there & back.

 

[TerryMiller]

I can't speak of any knowledge of that storm in May, but in late March of 1957, a major blizzard struck the western Panhandle. While there wasn't a great amount of snow, it blew so bad that snow drifts in town reached the eaves of houses.

Dad was lucky because he was working on a drilling rig at the time but had broken his ankle at work, so he was at home. The storm hit when the crew he worked with was on duty. I think it was something like 3 days before that crew got relieved. They had to use a dozer to haul the relieving crew into the rig.

 

[JT708]

I was 3

 

[Camo]

Damn I am old

Yes you are…

I don’t remember them, wasn’t born until late 72

 

[geezer77]

Only have "I was there" personal memories of these two:

April 2, 1956 - 9:30 PM. Drumright. I was just finishing my freshman year at DHS. We lived on the west edge of town, heard the approaching roar, and ran for the cellar. It was pitch dark outside, we never actually saw the thing, just heard the famous freight train sound and felt the ground shake. Funnel missed us by two blocks, went diagonally through Drumright SW to NE. Likely an F4 in today's ratings. Killed 5, four from the Bevel family in the NW part of town including their two high school age daughters. Awful.

June 8, 1974, another F4 tornado hit Drumright about 4 PM. We had all been following the storm on the radio since it went through Tinker AFB an hour or more before, so we had plenty of warning this time. Standing outside the cellar door, I watched this one approaching about a mile to the the SW before diving into the cellar. It passed 1/4 mile west of my mother's home and destroyed a nursing home and many other houses and businesses, left 12 dead, many injured.

Unless you actually hear an F4 or F5 up close and feel the ground seem to literally tremble, you cannot possibly appreciate how scary they can be. The power and sound of a 200-300+ mph wind concentrated into a small area is simply beyond our brain's ability to imagine. Wind speed during the the all-time record May 3 1999 F5+ that hit Bridge Creek/Moore was not even measurable because it completely maxed out the highest possible reading on instruments available at the time. All we know is it exceeded 312 MPH, which was the highest speed the the instrument could measure. Winds from this storm exceed that, but no one knows by how much. The storm literally peeled asphalt off stretches of the paved county roads near Amber and Bridge Creek, and left nothing but bare concrete slabs where houses used to be in entire neighborhoods in Moore and south OKC. It missed our home SE of Mustang by more than 6 miles, and even then the roar was pretty loud as we stood outside and listened as it went by. Terrifying.

 

[Profreedomokie]

I was 3 and still in Virginia.

 

[mtnboomr]

I WAS in the GM plant when that tornado tore through Tinker then ripped the north wall off the plant. That was the first big tornado that went through Moore.

In the second Moore tornado, my daughter rode the storm out in her bathtub as the house disintegrated around her.

 

[dennishoddy]

I was 5, school enrollment day for 1st grade in Hennessey. Superintendent told everyone to go home as the OHP said real bad storms were coming.
We spent the whole night in a flooded root cellar
I saw my 1st tornado that evening chewing up a wheat field and huge hailstones. Cimarron river flooded real bad. My dad lost his 52 Chevy in Dover in 5ft of water.

That was during the Great Plains Tornado Outbreak in May of 1955.
The city of Blackwell was almost blown off the map. The town knew a tornado was coming but didn’t realize it was coming from the opposite direction that tornadoes typically travel.
My Uncle and his sister were pulled out of the top story of their home and deposited into a plowed wheat field a quarter mile away. He said they looked like pin cushions with all the wood splinters sticking out of them.
My first dog Skeeter, get her rear leg broken that night. Vet set it, put a cast on it and she survived 16 years. I was 4 and ran over her on my trycycle according to my parents.

 

[RugersGR8]

IIRC Hennessey got about 14” of rain.

Significant Oklahoma Floods​

+ May 16-21, 1957 Floods​

“In Oklahoma, monthly precipitation for May exceeded the long-term means with many rainfall reporting stations receiving more than twice the mean. Precipitation at Hennessey, OK was 5 times the long-term monthly mean! In general, this month was the wettest May of record at the time for many stations.”