weather. There were wild blizzards that dropped what felt like yards of snow, followed by blistering-hot summers with blinding dust storms that could turn the day as dark as night. But it was the spring that most excited him, when ominous thunderheads would suddenly explode, unleashing terrifying winds, torrential rains, jagged zigzags of lightning, and gigantic clumps of hail. The storms were particularly dangerous on the wide-open landscape of the farm, where there was nowhere to escape if you were caught out in the open fields. On more than one occasion when he was a boy, Gary and his family were forced to run for their lives when a storm blew up.
Back then forecasting simply didn’t exist; you had to rely on folk wisdom and superstitions passed down through the generations. If you spotted more furry caterpillars in the fall or your cow’s hair was thicker than usual, a bitter winter was coming, his parents told him. Winds from the east and achy bones meant rain was on the way. In storm season people looked for even more peculiar clues, like flies congregating on the screen door. If the birds stopped singing, it was red alert. Later in life England still clung to those signs from nature, indicators that were often as accurate as any offered by technology.
His first memory of a tornado was in April 1947, when a twister made a direct hit on the nearby town of Woodward. Swirling to life 100 miles away in the Texas panhandle, it was said to be nearly 2 miles wide and had been on the ground for almost an hour as it approached the city just before 9:00 P.M . Still, there was no warning, and the tornado leveled a hundred city blocks in Woodward, engulfing what remained in a terrible inferno. In all, at least a hundred people died—it was the deadliest tornado in Oklahoma’s history.
Gary was just seven years old at the time, but decades later he still remembered the sky that night before the storm—how the clouds had looked like fuzzy pink egg cartons as the sun set. He learned years later that these were mammatus clouds and those puffs, sinking pouches of air that were usually indicative of a severe thunderstorm. He and his parents had stood outside their home looking at the odd sight, and his father declared in a matter-of-fact voice, “Somewhere tonight, there’s going to be a bad tornado.” A few hours later, after the sun had gone down, Gary was lying in bed wide awake. A light wind opened his curtains, and through his open window he could see his hound dog, Cookie, nosing around the front yard looking for night critters. Suddenly Cookie went rigid, and a few seconds later he let out a low, mournful howl, a sound Gary had never heard before. It scared him to death. Not long after, he heard the sound of sirens screaming in the distance, coming closer and closer. It went on all night, and he barely slept.
Television did not exist in Oklahoma back in 1947, and news and weather coverage on the radio was almost unheard of. So it wasn’t until the next morning, once his father had gone out to investigate, that the family learned about the deadly tornado next door. Later he listened in horror as adults told stories of how its winds were so strong they had literally blown people’s clothes off and police had found naked people impaled on telephone poles. He saw pictures of the aftermath, wagons piled with dead bodies and devastation as far as the eye could see. And he heard terrible stories of how kids had been sucked up by the storm and dropped far away, miraculously alive but never to be reunited with their families. The stories scared him. It was the first time he realized that the weather, as fascinating as it was, could be ruthless.
A few summers later Gary and his father were cleaning out one of their livestock pens when they were hit by the fiercest winds he had ever felt in his life. With dirt and debris flying in the air around them, they both dropped to the ground and clawed their way toward a brick chicken
Back then forecasting simply didn’t exist; you had to rely on folk wisdom and superstitions passed down through the generations. If you spotted more furry caterpillars in the fall or your cow’s hair was thicker than usual, a bitter winter was coming, his parents told him. Winds from the east and achy bones meant rain was on the way. In storm season people looked for even more peculiar clues, like flies congregating on the screen door. If the birds stopped singing, it was red alert. Later in life England still clung to those signs from nature, indicators that were often as accurate as any offered by technology.
His first memory of a tornado was in April 1947, when a twister made a direct hit on the nearby town of Woodward. Swirling to life 100 miles away in the Texas panhandle, it was said to be nearly 2 miles wide and had been on the ground for almost an hour as it approached the city just before 9:00 P.M . Still, there was no warning, and the tornado leveled a hundred city blocks in Woodward, engulfing what remained in a terrible inferno. In all, at least a hundred people died—it was the deadliest tornado in Oklahoma’s history.
Gary was just seven years old at the time, but decades later he still remembered the sky that night before the storm—how the clouds had looked like fuzzy pink egg cartons as the sun set. He learned years later that these were mammatus clouds and those puffs, sinking pouches of air that were usually indicative of a severe thunderstorm. He and his parents had stood outside their home looking at the odd sight, and his father declared in a matter-of-fact voice, “Somewhere tonight, there’s going to be a bad tornado.” A few hours later, after the sun had gone down, Gary was lying in bed wide awake. A light wind opened his curtains, and through his open window he could see his hound dog, Cookie, nosing around the front yard looking for night critters. Suddenly Cookie went rigid, and a few seconds later he let out a low, mournful howl, a sound Gary had never heard before. It scared him to death. Not long after, he heard the sound of sirens screaming in the distance, coming closer and closer. It went on all night, and he barely slept.
Television did not exist in Oklahoma back in 1947, and news and weather coverage on the radio was almost unheard of. So it wasn’t until the next morning, once his father had gone out to investigate, that the family learned about the deadly tornado next door. Later he listened in horror as adults told stories of how its winds were so strong they had literally blown people’s clothes off and police had found naked people impaled on telephone poles. He saw pictures of the aftermath, wagons piled with dead bodies and devastation as far as the eye could see. And he heard terrible stories of how kids had been sucked up by the storm and dropped far away, miraculously alive but never to be reunited with their families. The stories scared him. It was the first time he realized that the weather, as fascinating as it was, could be ruthless.
A few summers later Gary and his father were cleaning out one of their livestock pens when they were hit by the fiercest winds he had ever felt in his life. With dirt and debris flying in the air around them, they both dropped to the ground and clawed their way toward a brick chicken
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