PADUCAH – Monday marked the 99th anniversary of the March 18, 1925 Tri-State Tornado that ripped through southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and Indiana.
The storm traveled for three hours along a continuous path of 220 miles, killing 695 people and displacing 15,000. Another 2,027 were injured.
National Weather Service meteorologists believe that storm’s wind speeds likely exceeded 300 miles per hour — an EF 5 tornado, according to the current enhanced Fujita scale.
Christina Wielgos, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Paducah office, explains the storm’s aftermath as something out of a war movie.
“The destruction was something like an event similar to a bomb going off,” Wielgos said. ‘It was just indescribable damage. Houses were completely razed to the ground and rubble was carried many hundreds of kilometers away. We had livestock that were killed.”
Wielgos notes that meteorologists assume an area of low pressure has moved from Missouri to Illinois. She said a warm front north of that area caused the atmosphere to warm and become very humid.
“That set the stage for the development of thunderstorms,” Wielgos said. “You don’t get a tornado of that size without very strong winds in the air. That’s probably what happened to turn that tornado into a monster.”
The storm affected thirteen counties in three states and destroyed more than twenty communities in its path. While areas like Biehle, Missouri; and Griffin, Indiana, were 100% razed, while Murphysboro, Illinois, had the most deaths: 234 deaths.
WPSD Local 6 Chief Meteorologist Trent Okerson notes that weather warnings were virtually non-existent in the 1920s. He said there was little communication about when severe weather would occur.
“The weather forecast was based on observation, word of mouth or maybe something that was in the newspaper,” Okerson said. “There were no TV stations and the radio didn’t really have weather forecasts.”
According to Okerson, the word “tornado” was not allowed in a forecast until the 1940s.
“Obviously the lack of warning there contributed to the loss of life on that day,” he said.
Okerson said the Dec. 10, 2021, tornado outbreak that ripped through northwest Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky and Arkansas can be compared to the March 18, 1925 tornado.
“[The Dec. 10, 2021, tornado] was relatively close in strength and distance,” Okerson said.” There was a stretch of about 11 to 14 miles in northwest Tennessee where the December 10 tornado was not continuously on the ground.
Okerson said if that break had not occurred and the Dec. 10 tornado had been continuous from Arkansas to Kentucky, it would have surpassed the Tri-State Tornado in length. In terms of strength, the December 10 tornado was an EF 4 on the Fujita scale – one level lower than the EF 5 tornado of 1925.
Wielgos and Okerson agree that the 1925 Tri-State Tornado played a crucial role in the development of modern storm tracking technology and warning systems.
“You have your weather radios and smartphones,” Okerson said. “We recommend this as part of their early warning plan. Technology is not always foolproof, but having that extra layer of protection will help save lives if a severe weather threat occurs.”