MURPHYSBORO, Ill. (AP) — From Logan School’s top floor, 11-year-old Othella Silvey should have been able to see her house easily — it was less than two blocks away.
But after a monstrous tornado ripped through the Illinois town of Murphysboro on March 18, 1925, Othella saw nothing but flattened wasteland.
“She couldn’t tell which direction was home,” said Othella’s daughter, 81-year-old Sylvia Carvell.
Deadliest twister in recorded U.S. history
The deadliest twister in recorded U.S. history struck 100 years ago Tuesday, touching down in southeastern Missouri and tearing up everything in its 219-mile (352-kilometer) path for nearly four hours through southern Illinois and into Indiana.
It left 695 people dead and more than 2,000 injured, not counting the casualties from at least seven other twisters that the main storm spawned which spun off through Kentucky and into Alabama.
Modern standards qualify the so-called Tri-State Tornado as an F5, a mile-wide funnel with wind speeds greater than 260 mph (418 kph).
Perhaps the best evidence of its destructive handiwork was found on the Logan School grounds: A wooden board measuring 4 feet (1.22 meters) long by 8 inches (20.32 centimeters) wide driven so deeply into the trunk of a maple tree that it could hold the weight of a man.
It’s on display this month as part of the Jackson County Historical Society’s centennial commemoration of the disaster.
“You know the numbers: 200 mph winds. It was a mile wide. But the force that it took to put that pine board into that maple tree, it really puts it all in perspective,” said Mary Riseling, coordinator of the six-day remembrance. “To have one item that was witness to the force of those winds, it’s a story all its own.”
Perfect atmospheric mix for ferocious storm
The atmospheric stew that gave birth to the ferocious cataclysm was literally a perfect storm. A surface low pressure system located over the Arkansas-Missouri border moved northeast, blending with a warm front moving north, said Christine Wielgos, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service.
That churn “provided the warmth, the instability, the moisture” which, when “married perfectly,” produce long-track, violent tornadoes, Wielgos said.
Adding to the terror was the lack of notice. There was no reliable storm forecasting in 1925 and no warning system anyway.
“All they had was they…