Almost as dreaded as the black dusters were the spring twisters.
The clash of dry air with warm moist air coming from the Gulf resulted in inevitable farm and life destroying tornadoes.
During the Dust Bowl - when storms did come they often brought with them tornadoes and very little rain.
Excerpt from The Worst Hard Time - by Timothy Egan
May 6, 1933.
"Twister!"
People raced for shelter, praying for deliverance. The tornado touched down in Liberal, Kansas near the Oklahoma border, in the heart of tornado alley. It lifted roofs from barns, knocked down warehouse walls, pushed homes from their foundations. An old broom factory was completely destroyed. Stores were pulverized into piles of sticks. Windows shattered. Downtown was reduced to a heap of timber and sticks. Four people were killed: nearly eight hundred were left without homes. And not long after the tornado swept destroying one of the biggest towns on the High Plains, the mud pellets came again, tossed from the sky, a final insult.
Photographed near Carter, Oklahoma by Steve Douglass
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